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Friday Night Beer Blog [1]

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Date: 2022-08-26  

Hi beer fans, happy Friday! Come in and have a cold one with us.

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Beer news is bad for one-time high-flying international brand Mikkeller. I think this is a story we’ve heard before: Great beer → success → expansion → inadequate management → contraction. The details at Sightlines are well worth reading but here’s the condensed version: A reorg two weeks ago pushed out CEO Kenneth Madsen and brought founder Mikkel Bjergsø back into an executive role, and this week the first axe fell with the closing of their San Diego brewery.

I’m not sure how many of the signs of impending doom they didn’t have. From the first story (bold mine):

a spokesperson for Mikkeller would not answer a question whether a change in how the company approaches expansion would lead to the closure of any of the 52 current Mikkeller breweries and restaurants, which are located in 18 countries around the world… This signals the company’s renewed confidence in Bjergsø, whose denial and defiance last year in response to former workers’ stories of sexual harassment, bullying, and harassmen t prompted Madsen to distance Mikkeller from its founder’s statement s . In interviews with two Danish media outlets, Bjergsø claimed that activists were trying to ruin his business, and that issues of harassment at the brewery were not part of the company’s overall work culture. In October 2021, Madsen wrote in a statement that Bjergsø’s comments “did not convey the company's or Mikkel’s stance in full on this serious topic.” Bjergsø has been largely out of the spotlight since apologizing for his comments .

This week’s follow-up article reports the San Diego closure and adds more background about Mikkeller’s ongoing problems with its U.S. operations.

While the craft beer segment overall has struggled this year in groceries, pharmacies, and big-box stores, Mikkeller’s declines have been steeper than most of its peers. Its chain retail sales for the 52-week period ending Aug. 7 fell -29% compared to the year prior, according to data from market research company IRI. Overall, craft beer’s dollar sales declined -5.5% during that same period... Mikkeller San Diego was the focal point of numerous complaints from employees about unsafe working conditions, harassment, and bullying—problems that Mikkeller employees in other countries echoed... In October 2020, Mikkeller closed its New York City brewery and taproom just two-and-a-half years after it debuted... proved unworkable, and further revealed the convoluted and varied ownership structures that govern Mikkeller outposts around the world... Another of Mikkeller’s U.S. ties unraveled in November 2021, when the company’s partnership with Indiana-based 3 Floyds Brewing dissolved .

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I’m starting with the Watermelon Girlfriend I talked about last week, after this I think the only thing cold is Hazy Little Thing. What are you drinking? Who’s brewing?

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/8/26/2119088/-Friday-Night-Beer-Blog

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