New Anchor Brewing owner expected to be announced by end of May

The assets of the 127-year-old Anchor Brewing could have a new owner by the end of May, nearly four months after a winning bid was originally expected to be announced.

Buyers involved in the bidding process said the assignee in charge of the shuttered beer company’s assets hasn’t yet made a decision, which has led to a delay in publicizing the bid results.

Sam Singer, a San Francisco public-relations executive and Anchor spokesperson, told The Examiner in January that the company’s liquidator was reviewing bids from multiple parties. A winner was expected to be announced by the end of the month, allowing them to purchase all or parts of the beermaker’s assets in the first quarter of this year.

Now, he said Anchor’s new owners will be in place by the end of May.

“No updates as of yet, but it is still anticipated that a sale of Anchor Brewing Co. will occur later this month,” Singer wrote in an email to The Examiner this week.

Anchor shut down last July , with owner Sapporo citing declining sales since 2016, the year before the Japanese company bought the beermaker for $85 million. Nearly 80% of its sales were on-site at bars and restaurants, which declined when the COVID-19 pandemic sent the food and drink industry into a downturn. An assignee was tasked with liquidating the company’s assets and paying its creditors.

Numerous buyers stepped up with their own visions for reviving the company in the months following Anchor’s closure.

Anchor SF Cooperative , a group of former Anchor union workers hoping to save the brewery, said last month that it would not continue pursuing a bid as a standalone buyer due to competitors’ bid prices. The cooperative said it opted to form relationships with the other bidders, mostly to propose ways in which their knowledge and expertise could be used once taps hopefully start flowing again.

“We are still interested and have voiced publicly that we would love to work with whoever wins the bid, but we don’t know what is happening in the process,” said Patrick Machel, chairman of the cooperative.

“We expect there to be news sometime this month but as we have bowed out of the process, we are at the whim of what the assignee decides,” he said.

Mike Walsh, a Potrero Hill venture capitalist , shared in a blog post last month that his bid alongside an investor group was still in contention.

“I can’t believe how long this process is taking,” he wrote in the post, adding that his group was still “optimistic” about purchasing Anchor’s assets and “frustrated by the delays.”

Walsh has expressed his desire to buy the company and produce the beer locally, while also bringing live music to Anchor Taps to boost new artists’ careers.

Regardless of the outcome at the end of the month, the collection of union workers who once bottled steam beers by the barrel said it remains ready and willing to help the lucky winner.

“The plan was, and still is, to be a voice of reason as a representative of the workers of Anchor,” Machel said.