There’s no denying the difficulties and rapidly increasing array of obstacles currently facing the American beer industry. Last year saw more U.S. craft breweries close than open, and a record number of shutterings in a single year for San Diego County’s ale-and-lager businesses. The struggle is real for so many, yet there are still a small number of companies that are not only weathering the storm, but growing behind strategic initiatives and intelligent business decisions. One such operation is Coronado Brewing (CBC).
Established on its namesake island municipality in 1996, the company has been on an upward trajectory since taking a big swing by constructing a 20,000-square-foot production facility (which has since blossomed into a multi-building base of operations) in the inland community of Bay Park in 2014. That same year, the quality of CBC’s beers earned it Champion Mid-sized Brewery honors at the largest international brewing competition on the planet, the World Beer Cup (CBC). A decade later, beyond craft-beer’s hey-day but still performing in the top percentile, the CBC team found themselves back on a pedestal, being named 2024 Craft Brewery of the Year by industry news outlet, Brewbound.
With the exception of teaming with coastal apparel brand Salty Crew to produce a core blonde ale – which has thrived since its debut in 2019 – CBC is not a flashy company. Its portfolio is smallish by today’s standards, and seasonals are limited versus weekly or bi-weekly, bucking a methodology that is common among many of today’s most successful brewing companies. That’s not to say CBC’s brewers aren’t keyed in on emerging styles. They simply prefer to tackle them in a small-batch sense versus chasing trends on a larger, riskier scale.
Slow and steady, analytical versus reactive, the company remains one of San Diego’s largest and healthiest independent craft-beer producers. It’s no small feat, especially in these challenging and uncertain times, making a case for checking in with CBC leadership to find out what has worked for them and may also help their contemporaries.
From a beer perspective, CBC Chief Commercial Officer Clinton Smith says it’s important to have a focused portfolio and invest in flagship brands, pointing to the success and continued strength of year-round West Coast IPA, Weekend Vibes, and the aforementioned Salty Crew Blonde Ale. The former was already a hit before taking bronze at the Great American Beer Festival, and CBC has leveraged its popularity, adding a double IPA called Big Weekend to its core lineup. The company has also done well with its jasmine-rice-infused “premium” lager, Nado. Released at the onset of 2023 in response to craft fans’ heightened interest in easy-drinking lagers, it remains part of CBC’s core rotation and even struck gold at the 2024 WBC.
Smith says it’s important not only to release new beers, but to make sure those offerings help strengthen a business’ overall brand while maintaining or increasing consumer interest. Examples can be found in CBC’s 2025 release calendar, which includes four new editions of the company’s Chasing Waves series, which started as a line of hazy IPAs – one of the country’s most popular styles – but has expanded to include multiple styles, many of which feature a different combination of craft fans’ favorite ingredients – hops. CBC will also release three collaboration beers, one of which, an IPA called Vacation Land that was developed with Carlsbad’s Burgeon Beer Co., debuted earlier this month. Again, a popular style, but in this case the beer gets extra relevance and lift care of a popular player in the local beer scene.
Which brings Smith to another important tip: stay local. The 16-year industry veteran says its important to focus on core markets rather than overextending into regions with weaker brand recognition or lower potential for successfully competing alongside brands that call those locales home or are already well established. In the 2010s, CBC pivoted in a big way, extracting itself from underperforming territories, channeling its energy in its own backyard while regrouping to best grow a temporarily condensed but far more serviceable distribution footprint. It was a strategic move, and one which made it possible for CBC to streamline its operations, own home and maximize its performance in geographic areas best-suited for its brand and products.
Also important, says Smith, is to constantly work at strengthening a company’s ties to its community. He says to engage with local brewers and industry organizations as well as consumers to build long-term relationships and loyalty. This is best done in authentic ways, so simply being open to being a credit to one’s community can lead to opportunities to do just that. Case in point as when CBC brewed a special beer to help raise funds to support the C4 Foundation, a local nonprofit assisting Navy SEALs and their families. That one-off, Aloha Warrior IPA, was such a hit that it has since been added to the company’s year-round roster, where it will continue to help the C4 Foundation accomplish its goals.
While the tips above have worked for CBC, in the end, nothing is simple or fool-proof, hence Smith’s last bit of advice that brewery owners should not be afraid to pivot. Maintaining a broad outlook, taking in reliable data and honestly interpreting it is key, and if shifts need to be made, that’s just part of business. Now more than ever, not just in the brewing industry but everywhere. It just may be more relevant in the brewing industry than just about anywhere else.
Coronado Brewing’s headquarters is located at 1205 Knoxville Street in Bay Park, and its original brewpub is located at 170 Orange Avenue in Coronado