Over its nine-year history, Modern Times Beer has made a practice of eschewing traditional media, electing instead to utilize its blog to communicate to fans and the general public about company happenings. It’s one of numerous out-of-the-norm methodologies for a company that set out to do things differently and be a disruptive operation that would endear itself to younger, more alt-minded beer consumers. Early on, it proved an effective and engaging means for sharing information with fans of the brand, but over the past year, there has been a glut of largely dismal news to share, and the one-way communication vacuum is coming off in a negative light.
Last May, a blog post conveyed company sentiment on an online reckoning where women in the beer industry were speaking out about discrimination and harassment in the workplace, including direct accusations levied against Modern Times, its founder Jacob McKean and others within the organization. A statement from McKean announcing he was stepping away from the company came the next day, followed by a statement from Modern Times employees. Next up was a rundown of changes being implemented which included the appointment of new female leadership at the executive level. Then in February, a post detailed the company’s decision to shutter all of its locations outside of San Diego and Orange Counties, a move necessitated by the company being stretched thin, struggling financially and failing in most regards, largely as a result of rapid expansion immediately followed by the devastating impacts of the global pandemic.
Such subject matter is far from the happy, hipster-tinged banter of blog posts from years past where Modern Times proudly tooted its horn about its robust beer portfolio, grand-scale events, aggressive expansion beyond its home territory and McKean’s personal opinions on a variety of industry-related topics. But all of the company’s posts heretofore pale to the monumental message that was quietly posted earlier this week, updating the public that the company will likely soon be forcibly sold by its lender.
On Tuesday, April 5, Modern Times quietly posted a blog titled “An Update on the Immediate Future of Modern Times”. It speaks of a difficult two years leading that have led to reductions in personnel and consolidation of the company’s geographic footprint, while recapping its organizational restructuring and noting universal manufacturing-industry travails such as rising fuel prices and supply-chain issues, before getting to the meat of the matter.
Our senior secured lender (AKA bank) tightly monitors the company’s finances and, though we have been working diligently with their officers over the past weeks, they have commenced litigation which we believe will result in a court-ordered receivership sale of Modern Times. So, what is a receivership? It’s complicated but it boils down to this: our bank nominates someone to oversee the sale of the Modern Times business. Once approved by the court, this nominated person, or “receiver,” will be the final word on our financial decisions for the immediate future, and in charge of the sale of the rand to interested parties.
The post’s undefined author expresses how this development, while not optimal, is better than the company going out of business, terminating its staff and liquidating its assets, because in this scenario, a new owner can take the reins and potentially right the ship.
The post goes on to state: This has been an incredibly tough decision in a series of tough decisions; one more difficult message to write in a long line of difficult messages. But we are not done, and we are not giving up.
Over the past two days, numerous Modern Times fans have been vocal about their displeasure that news this significant was silently posted to an in-house blog. To see a company that has been so eager to flamboyantly share its news when times have been good publish its bad news without so much as a link to the post being shared via its very-active social-media channels is not sitting well. This is particularly true with subscribers to the company’s members-only beer clubs, who have money tied up in the brand and are concerned about products they have coming their way, and how that will go as Modern Times advances into an only semi-certain future. Those members were not notified of the post or the situation and instead found out through other parties on social media or news publications.
“I feel that, over the last few months, our new leadership group has been as transparent about our situation as we can possibly be, and we posted the blog about the receivership as soon as we knew it was a certainty,” says Modern Times Marketing Director Dan Reed. “As to not posting to social media, we’d already said publicly that we were open to a sale and required outside investment, and I didn’t feel that entering a receivership–which is, in and of itself, fairly complicated–was something that suited a social-media venue. If our fans were unsatisfied with that level of engagement, I’ll fully own the blame there.”
Modern Times was established in 2013. At its height, it was the fortieth-largest craft brewing company in the country in 2020. Following the aforementioned shuttering of public venues in Portland (Oregon), Oakland, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, the company currently operates tasting rooms in North Park, Encinitas and Anaheim, in addition to its Point Loma headquarters.
“At this point, those of us who are here working through this process are doing so in the interest of keeping Modern Times alive and growing into the future, and to ensure that our fans continue to get the great beers and coffees they’ve come to expect from us,” says Reed. “It’s an exhausting process and we’re never going to make everybody happy, especially in a situation this nuanced and complex, but I can confidently say that we’re doing everything we can.”