"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.
[...]
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.
Seemed popular enough in San Francisco for... 127 years.
I'm sure Sapporo's strategy of automizing in a way that cut productivity in half, doing an expensive pointless rebrand, cutting a popular Christmas line, and then aggressively scaling back sales nationally had no impact on sales.
Must have been the flavor.