"The stake through the heart of Anchor was the pandemic," Sam Singer, a spokesman for the company, said by phone on Wednesday, noting that 70 percent of its product had been sold in restaurants and bars. In 2021, Anchor Brewing tried to adapt, rebranding and bottling and canning more of its beers to sell in grocery stores. But those changes "couldn't make up for the significant loss of sales," he added.
In a last-ditch attempt to stay afloat, Anchor limited sales of its beer to California, and stopped producing one of its products, a Christmas ale.
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After Anchor was acquired by Sapporo, workers spoke out about what they described as inadequate pay and unfair working conditions, and voted to unionize in 2019.
It pains me to say this but the local San Francisco craft beer scene is very weak, at least compared to what I grew up with
I think that's true lots of places. The Bay still has my favorite brewery (Rare Barrel) but I think the craft beer industry in general is not doing great.
I feel like that's in general becoming true. There's a bunch of craft breweries by me that all have like 1-2 good to decent beers and everything else is just there to check the box or not to style at all.
But it could also be I'm getting more snobby because I'm a Homebrewer so I just have a different mentality when trying beer.