Last month, the owners of Vermont’s Magic Hat Brewery, FIFCO USA, a subsidiary of Florida Ice and Farm Co. announced it was moving all Magic Hat production to the Genesee Brewing headquarters in Rochester, N.Y. This move, during COVID-19, meant that forty-three people lost their jobs. Magic Hat had employed forty-six people in Vermont.
Bob Johnson, the original brewer, and Alan Newman co-founded the brewery in 1994. Newman sold the company to North American Breweries in 2010. He feels that was the end of Magic Hat as an innovating craft brewery. KPS Capital Partners formed North American Breweries to manage its beer investments.
Companies like KPS buy breweries as an investment; they do not really have any interest in running the company or building the business. They cut expenses, which usually involves cutting jobs, extract value and then sell the company. That is what happened to Magic Hat. In 2012, Magic Hat and the brewing investments were sold to FIFCO for $388 million dollars.
In 1994, at the time of Magic Hat’s founding, there were only a few other breweries and a few brew pubs in the state. Greg Noonan founded Vermont’s first brewpub in 1988. Today, Vermont has 61 breweries. In 2018, Vermont breweries produced 350,000 barrels (61 gallons per barrel) which had a value of $362 million dollars.
Magic Hat’s story of being a pioneer in craft brewing, seeking to expand and then being sold for investment value could be the tale of many of the country’s over 7,000 brewers as they faced the economic consequences of COVID-19.
For more information about Magic Hat’s move, click here