Deschutes Brewery Delays Roanoke Production Facility

(Roanoke, VA) – Just a few weeks after Green Flash Brewing closed down their second production facility in the state of Virginia, we just learned from The Roanoke Times online that Deschutes Brewery has pumped the brakes on lighting up their second production facility on the East Coast in order to right-size their plans. [Link]

“Closing on the land on May 1 as planned would have triggered all of the performance goals for investment, construction and hiring for Deschutes. Uncomfortable that they couldn’t meet those goals if they decided to scale back the size of the Roanoke brewery, Townsend said, Deschutes asked to apply the brakes.”

As we’ve covered extensively here at The Full Pint, many medium to large craft breweries began grand expansion plans based on the rapid growth of the sector between 2012 and 2014. With the shift in how consumers purchase and enjoy beers and the increase in smaller breweries filling local demand, breweries such as Green Flash Brewing, Stone Brewing, Sierra Nevada Brewing have felt a bit of a string to their projected growth. Deschutes Brewery, a nearly 30 year old company out of Bend, OR is has not been immune to the market change. Companies of this size have many SKUs that retailers depend on, and there is less flexibility to create one-off after one-off.

We will be following this story closely.