Sapporo USA is laying off 220 workers at Stone Brewing's three Escondido, California, locations after selling off the iconic craft beer brand and failing to find a future for the facilities.
The Japanese-owned beer company filed Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification letters, the federally required layoff notices, with the state of California, disclosing that the first 58 workers will lose their jobs starting October 19. The remaining cuts will follow in phases as the Escondido brewery winds down, Fox Business reported.
Sapporo bought Stone Brewing in 2022. Less than four years later, it sold the brand to Firestone Walker Brewing Company and Duvel Moortgat USA in a deal that closed May 15. But the sale did not include Stone's three Escondido production sites, leaving Sapporo holding properties it no longer needed and a workforce it could not keep.
Sapporo USA CEO Zach Keeling told the Los Angeles Times the company could not find a "viable long-term solution" for the Escondido property. He offered a statement that read more like corporate boilerplate than a plan:
"This is an understandably difficult time for our Escondido employees and community, and we're committed to supporting them through this transition."
What that "transition" looks like for 220 workers in a mid-size Southern California city, Keeling did not say.
Stone beer will keep flowing, just not from the place where it was born. Firestone Walker plans to brew it at its facility in Paso Robles, California, about 250 miles north of Escondido. Duvel USA's Boulevard brewery in Kansas City, Missouri, will handle additional production. Sapporo said it would also use its own Richmond, Virginia, brewery during the transition period.
Stone Brewing was founded in Southern California in 1996 and grew into one of the region's largest craft beer operations. For three decades, Escondido was the brand's home. Now the brewing moves elsewhere, and the workers who kept those kettles running are out.
When the deal was announced in April, Firestone Walker and Duvel said they expected to offer jobs to "a significant number" of Stone employees, primarily in hospitality, sales, and marketing. Production roles, they said, would be "evaluated" as brewing shifted to their own facilities. Fox Business reached out to Sapporo for confirmation of the total layoff figure but had not received a response at the time of publication.
That language, "evaluated", was a warning sign. Production workers are the backbone of any brewery, and when the production leaves town, those jobs leave with it. The WARN letters now confirm what the corporate hedging suggested.
Not everything disappears. The acquisition by Firestone Walker and Duvel included Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens at Liberty Station in San Diego, which will remain both a hospitality venue and an active brewery. Taprooms in San Diego's Little Italy neighborhood, Oceanside, and Pasadena were also part of the deal.
A Stone Brewing spokesperson told the New York Post that "SoCal will continue to be Stone's biggest market." That may comfort fans who want to buy the beer, but it does nothing for the workers in Escondido who made it.
Sapporo, for its part, said at the time of the April announcement that it would keep operating the Escondido bistro while evaluating "long-term strategic options" for the site. Whether that bistro survives the broader shutdown remains unclear.
The layoffs mark the effective end of Sapporo's bet on American craft beer. The company is now concentrating its U.S. resources on its namesake Sapporo lager, the product it actually knows how to sell globally, and shedding the craft brand it acquired just three years ago.
The broader craft beer industry has struggled in recent years. Declining consumer interest and the lingering economic damage from COVID-19 have squeezed smaller and mid-size breweries across the country. Stone's fate under Sapporo fits that pattern: a storied brand bought at what now looks like the wrong moment, by a company that ultimately chose retreat over reinvestment.
None of that softens the blow for the 220 workers in Escondido. They did not make the decision to sell the brand. They did not choose to leave the Escondido facilities out of the acquisition. They showed up, brewed the beer, and now they are being told the company could not find a "viable long-term solution", corporate-speak for "we're done here."
Several critical questions remain unanswered. How many Stone employees were actually offered positions by Firestone Walker or Duvel, and how many accepted? What happens to the Escondido property itself? And what is the timeline for the remaining 162 layoffs beyond the first wave of 58 in October? Sapporo has not said.
When a foreign conglomerate buys an American brand, strips it for parts, and walks away, the people left holding the bag are never the executives who signed the deal, they are the workers who built the product that made the brand worth buying in the first place.
