craft-beer
(18)
How Murphy Hospitality Group Turned One Island Into a Hospitality Flywheel
The Murphy family started with two people doing every job in one PEI restaurant. Four decades later, their cleverest product is not a steak, a suite or a pint - it is the way all three sell one another.
The Hard-Kombucha Startup That Bought Too Much Brewery - Then Found Its Real Business
Embolden began with hard kombucha, landed in a 20-barrel brewhouse, and turned excess capacity into a three-brand beverage portfolio. Its useful lesson is not to chase every category - it is to make one expensive asset serve several kinds of customer.
Manhattan Hadn't Brewed Its Own Beer Since 1995. Two Guys With Confiscated Fake IDs Fixed That.
A finance trader and his oldest friend spent a decade trying to brew beer in the one New York borough that had given up on breweries. Then they opened during a pandemic - and had to reinvent the whole thing in a week.
The Man Who Built the Keg Empire, Then Built Its Rival
A brewer's cash gets trapped in steel that spends half its life empty. Chris Sapyta helped invent the fix at one company, then spent a decade out-flexing it at his own.
Harpoon Bet $70 Million on Its Workers. Then the Beer Market Changed.
Harpoon used a leveraged employee buyout to keep a beloved Boston brewer independent. A decade later, consolidation forced a second experiment: share the machinery, protect the local brands and make the taproom matter as much as the six-pack.
The Pizza That Became a Place: How UNO Is Rebuilding Around Its Deep-Dish Original
An 83-year-old Chicago pie is now carrying a leaner restaurant company - through neighborhood dining rooms, hotel conversions, delivery counters and a brand story no rival can quite copy.
New Belgium Brewing
A bicycle trip supplied the romance. Voodoo Ranger supplied the scale. Thirty-five years after its basement debut, New Belgium is testing whether craft-beer values can survive national reach, restless consumers and a change of ownership.
Firestone Walker Brewing Company
Firestone Walker built a regional beer business by protecting small places to experiment - oak barrels, a wild-ale cellar and a Venice R&D brewhouse - then letting the best ideas travel.
Ford's Garage
A burger joint that talked Ford Motor Company into lending out the Blue Oval - and is now franchising its 1920s garage across the country, one copper bar and branded bun at a time.
Lagunitas Brewing Company
A reggae drummer with a homebrew kit built one of America's loudest IPAs, sold it to Heineken for a reported $1 billion, and somehow kept the dog on the label.
TALEA Beer Co.
TALEA Beer Co. is a women-founded and women-owned craft brewery based in Brooklyn, New York, built to make beer approachable for people the craft category has historically overlooked. Founded in 2018 by Tara Hankinson and LeAnn Darland and opened as a brewery and taproom in 2021, TALEA brews fruit-forward, lower-alcohol reinventions of classic styles and runs a growing network of design-forward taprooms across New York City, alongside a direct-to-consumer online shop, retail distribution in 1,300+ New York stores, and events.
Almanac Beer Co.
Almanac Beer Co. is an Alameda, California craft brewery founded in 2010 by Jesse Friedman and Damian Fagan. Known first for oak-aged sours and farm-to-barrel ales inspired by the Bay Area's seasonal produce, the company has reinvented itself as 'Almanac Adventureland' - a 30,000+ square-foot brewery, beer garden and family entertainment destination inside a restored 1940s naval hangar, complete with arcade games, sandboxes, pizza, food pop-ups and festivals that draw up to 3,000 visitors on a peak day.
Berkeley Yeast
Berkeley Yeast is an Oakland-based biotechnology company that bioengineers specialized yeast strains for brewers, winemakers, and beverage makers, giving fermented drinks new flavors, greater consistency, and lower resource use without changing a brewery's existing equipment or process.
Aeronaut Brewing Company
Aeronaut Brewing Company is a Somerville, Massachusetts craft brewery founded in 2014 by three grad-school roommates who brought MIT and Cornell science backgrounds to beer. Known for propagating its own house-cultured yeast and experimental recipes, Aeronaut pairs adventurous ales and lagers with a Somerville taproom that doubles as a food hall, live-music venue and community hub. In 2024 it merged with Dorchester Brewing Company under a new parent, Tasty Liquid Alliance.
Dokkaebier
Dokkaebier is an Oakland-based craft brewery brewing Asian-inspired beers that fold ingredients like kimchi culture, yuzu, lemongrass, Szechuan peppercorns, galangal and bamboo leaves into familiar styles. Founded in 2020 by beverage-industry veteran Youngwon Lee and named after the mischievous, drink-loving spirits of Korean folklore, the company set out to build a more representative craft beer scene while making flavors that stand out. Its lineup - led by the experimental Kimchi Sour and the approachable Yuza Blonde - is sold direct-to-consumer online and has been distributed across California and beyond.
Narragansett Brewing Company
Narragansett Brewing Company is New England's storied lager brand, founded in 1890 in Rhode Island and once the largest brewery in the region. After the brand nearly vanished in the early 2000s, Rhode Island native Mark Hellendrung and a group of local investors bought it back in 2005, rebuilt its reputation around the classic Lager and the 'Hi, Neighbor, have a Gansett!' slogan, and in 2021 finally brought brewing home to a new 18,000-square-foot brewery and taproom in Providence's Fox Point neighborhood. Today it is an independent craft brewer producing roughly 100,000 barrels a year.
World Market
World Market (legally Cost Plus World Market) is an American specialty retailer that has sold globally sourced furniture, home decor, gourmet foods, wine, coffee and gifts since 1958. From its first shop on San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, it grew into a chain of roughly 240+ stores across the United States plus a fast-growing e-commerce business, built on the idea that a shopper in suburban America can fill a cart with hand-picked goods from dozens of countries at affordable prices.
Dois Corvos
Dois Corvos is Lisbon's landmark independent craft brewery, founded in 2013 by Scott Steffens and Susana Cascais in the Marvila district. What started with a homebrew kit brought from Seattle has grown into one of Portugal's most recognised beer makers — producing roughly 550,000 litres a year, maintaining ~350 oak barrels, exporting to eight-plus countries, and operating two taprooms — all while remaining 100% family-owned with zero corporate backing.