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Citing declining beer sales and volume that hasn’t grown as expected, Deschutes Brewery, the tenth largest craft brewery in the country, laid off 10 percent of its workforce last week.
Described as a cost cutting measure designed to make the company leaner, Deschutes Brewery’s CEO and president Michael LaLonde, explained to the to the Bend Bulletin, that it was a tough yet necessary move….
“We looked at our core business and looked at those positions that weren’t about the core focus and realized they had to be eliminated. Our volume hasn’t been what we thought it was so our sizing was not in line with that.”
“We have made the hard decision to reduce staff across sales, marketing and operations by 10 percent to match our sales volume…This decision was extremely difficult to make, but necessary for the brewery given current market conditions and trends.”
And according to The Bulletin, the newly aligned heritage brewery is banking on innovation in 2019 to better its fortunes…
The Bend, Oregon-based brewery is now canning 10 percent of its beers and it recently acquired a pilot brewing system that will enable experimentation in small batches.
In addition to having just released Da Shootz!, a 45 ABV American Pilsner that Deschutes describes ‘lifestyle lager’ Deschutes recently began canning its new hazy IPA, Fresh Haze. The brewery also plans to repackage its entire family of beers in 2019 and even introduce a series of sours.
According to the Brewers Association, a national trade organization based in Bounder, Colorado, Deschutes is ranked nationally as 20th in overall beer sales volume, having brewed almost 400,000 barrels in 2017. But like many of the nation’s larger craft breweries, their sales are slowing, as consumers migrate away from widely distributed more national brands such as Deschutes to uber-local breweries.
As of Friday, the precise number of workers affected wasn’t known. The cuts come after the 30-year old Bend brewery pulled back on plans to build an East Coast brewing facility in Roanoke, Virginia.
According to the Brewers Association craft beer’s growth slowed to 5% in 2017. And this was the second time Deschutes Brewery has had layoffs since 2005.
