Rogue Brewery is suddenly shut down. They put out an amazing number of brews and spirits over the years, and this news came as a huge surprise to me. Rogue Ales & Spirits shuts down after 37 years: ‘Everybody’s shocked’ | kgw.com
Damned shame.
But a lot of businesses in trouble do their damnedest to keep it an absolute secret until one day the next shift shows up to locked doors and a hand-made sign on the outside.
That happened to one of my favorite little restaurants a couple of doors down from my old workplace. One day, they were busily serving a packed house at lunch time as usual, and the next day, GONE! Place was stripped bare, clean to the fixtures overnight. I’ll never forget it.
I loved that place. You could eat there everyday and never get tired. They had an extensive menu of soups, big sandwiches, and a vast array of baked potato meals. Everything was always fantastic.
RIP Wellington’s. I still think of you at noon.
It’s a bummer.
I’ve had that happen at a place where I was a regular. It was like “see you tomorrow” and the next day they were gone.
The craft brewing boom has ended
Also happened to Iron Hill Brewery, a smallish restaurant/brewery chain in the Philly/Delaware area. Open one day, closed the next with no warning. Went directly to Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Beer was decent, but the Kennet Square Mushroom Soup was the reason to go there.
Wow, that’s a surprise. Looks like they owed a shit-ton of money, though. I get a lot of questions about my Full Sail tee. People think it’s a sailing club of some sort. 
Much like small vintners. My old high school chum owns a winery in Walla Walla. Last time I spoke with him, they were concentrating on renting out their space for events. He said that the turn towards mixed drinks with stupid names have bled off the younger folks and wine sales have plummeted.
A local craft brewery shut down overnight in my town and it turned out the owner/manager had a few too many of his own beers and proceeded to drive into another car after his shift and kill someone.
What’s bewildering is when long-time favorite hangouts suddenly shut down with no notice beforehand to customers.
A few years ago the beloved Parkette Drive-In in Lexington, KY shut down this way. They could’ve announced a closing coming in a few weeks/months and milked a bunch of nostalgia traffic, but nah.
I suspect the counter argument, especially for restaurants, is that as soon as you announce a closing, all your help immediately starts looking for work and quits no-notice they day they find something else. Leading all but instantly to staffing chaos for you.
If the ownership is really in debt there’s also the fact that announcing you’re closing tells all your suppliers they’re about to be stiffed for everything you already owe them and everything they might deliver to you between now and then. Lotta businesses that are failing get behinder and behinder to more and more of their suppliers.
One of the features of Chapter 11 bankruptcy law is explicitly that suppliers cannot pull this when you declare BK. They have to keep supplying you even though you’re not going to pay them for a long time and maybe only nickels on the dollar. Precisely to prevent the suppliers all pulling out and forcing the shutdown of a company that was trying to keep going through the BK process. But if you’re just closing a business, or doing a Chapter 7 shutdown+BK, there’s no such “status quo” provision.
Hence the value of secrecy. To the indebted owners, if not to anyone else.
It probably ended at least a year or two ago. The closure of Anchor Brewing was a definite sign (even though Hamdi Ulukaya of Chobani Yogurt is trying to bring it back). It’s not just in the US, either; in the UK, pubs (many of which brewed their own beers) have been closing at an alarming rate. And in Canada, one of my favorite foreign brewers, Unibroue, cut back on the number of beers it distributed to the US. In the case of Rogue, many of its problems seem to have begun in 2014, when one of its founders, Jack Joyce, died. His son apparently wasn’t up to the job of running the company and ceased involvement in its affairs in 2018.
There are sooo many brew-pubs in Astoria that you couldn’t taste them all in a month. Try to find a place to take your family for breakfast, you can’t. Maybe if you buy Grandma a beer.
Plus, Rogue, you have to pay your taxes, your bills, your employees, and your creditors. That is important. Did Trump or ICE put them down? No, they did it all by themselves.
Not to get off topic, but isn’t Pig ‘N Pancake still open?
But Trump absolutely did put them down if exports to Canada represented a significant portion of their revenue. You don’t help businesses in the United States by threatening and mocking our allies and trading partners.
Hmmm…guess I’d better go out and grab a sixer or two of Dead Guy IPA while I still can.
Yeah sad news, particularly how it happened. It’s happening a lot nowadays. I think it’s safe to say the American craft beer boom is over 
Anchor 
. I read the new owner hasn’t done much to get the taps flowing again, and the brewery still sits idle with very little activity going on. After that closure I make a point to buy beer directly from my local brewpubs - it costs a little more, but the beer is good and I want to help keep these businesses around.
And yeah, wine and beer and alcohol in general is on a decline. Apparently young people just aren’t into it and would rather spend time and money on experiences and on their smart phones. Go figure. And yeah, while the export market may also be soft, the current “neener-neener” international political climate isn’t helping.
What???
In chapter 11, collection on old debts may be paused, but no one is compelled to supply goods and services.
If anything new debs may be given priority over the old ones.