Chanhassen Brewing Company and Mankato Brewery will close in a couple of weeks.
ST PAUL, Minn. — What was once a booming beer business in the late 2010s, breweries aren’t popping up like they used to.
Tim Tupy started Mankato Brewing 13 years ago and will pour its last draft at the end of the month.
“At that time there was only 12 production breweries in the state, 12 breweries, and two of those were brewpubs of Granite City and Rock Bottom,” Tupy said. “We chose to go out on our own terms.”
He said it was a combination of factors that led to his decision to close. He said it was getting hard to operate two businesses: the brewery and the other company he and his wife own.
Originally, he hoped someone would take it over, someone who wanted to be an owner/operator. He announced his decision to close six months ago, and after no one reached out his hopes faded.
“Once I exhausted [that] I knew that we weren’t going to find one of our investors or a family member that would step up and wanted to run a brewery,” he said.
Tupy said 2019 was the brewery’s best year in sales, a year before the pandemic. He said the pandemic shifted the business.
“Consumers, they’ve changed their habits,” he said. “People are just in general drinking less alcohol, drinking less beer.”
He said they offer NA options, but they never made the leap to sell food and THC drinks.
Mankato Brewing isn’t the only place closing in a matter of days. Chanhassen Brewing Company is closing on Feb. 1. Leinies in Chippewa Falls is set to close this Friday.
“As we’re seeing things kind of plateau, it is very different from what we are kind of used to from the 2015, 2016, 2017, era in that we are not seeing as many breweries opening we are still now seeing more breweries closing,” said Bob Galligan, director of government and industry relations for Minnesota Craft Brewer’s Guild.
Galligan said the industry has changed a lot over the years, and a lot of the changes have happened back-to-back. He said breweries are finding new ways to adapt in a changing landscape by offering non-alcoholic beer and THC drinks.
“It would take me more than my two hands to count how many breweries this has probably saved coming out of the pandemic,” he said about THC drinks. “To brewers’ credit, one of our great assets is that we are masters of the pivot… the sky is not falling by any stretch of the imagination.”
Galligan said the industry knows younger generations aren’t going out as much anymore, so breweries are giving them more options when they do.
St. Paul Brewing in the old Hamm’s Brewing building is one of the breweries offering THC drinks. They’ve switched from a distribution model to a brewpub model.
“We switched to brewpub because we saw that shelf space was limited, there were so many openings that we had to create a destination where people could come and have a really great experience, and we could also offer more. Offer more beyond beer, that NA experience is really popular now, offer a full food menu, and also have the option of cocktails,” said Sean Ryan, senior project manager for Saint Paul Brewing.
He said the model switch has positively impacted business.
“Year-over-year we’re up 25% right now which is not typical for the breweries in Minnesota, as far as I know, and we’ve seen a whole influx of new customers who necessarily wouldn’t go to a brewery but feel that they could find something here for themselves,” he said.
Ryan said they also offer tours where they share their building's history. He said people travel from out-of-state to visit the brewery for the experience. Ryan said they’re hoping to turn the microbrewery into a destination where people can hang out all day.
“We’re looking to expand on the second floor with a new entertainment experience. On the third floor we’re going to add a community event center seating up to 300 people, so that we can continue to expand that destination where people can come and spend all day,” he said.
Galligan said the future of this industry is getting back to focusing on people in the community.
“I think we’re kind of returning to our roots in a lot of ways. Before prohibition beer was basically produced the way that are we are doing, craft beer is the American model quite frankly,” Galligan said.