Earlier today, Modern Times Beer announced that it will be closing four of its public venues come the end of the week. Those high-profile spots are located in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Oakland and Portland, Oregon, and comprise a whopping half of the beermaker’s total locations. This major development was communicated to fans via the company’s social-media accounts and elaborated on care of a blog post on its official blog.
The company will continue to operate the tasting room at its Point Loma headquarters, as well as satellite venues in North Park, Encinitas and Anaheim, as it pulls its focus back to Southern California, where it quickly found success after debuting in 2013. By 2018, Modern Times was among the 50 largest brewing companies in the U.S., coming in at 40 in 2020 despite a wealth of challenges brought on by the pandemic as well as increased competition from an ever-growing number of new craft breweries. Now, it finds itself in a desperate position, struggling to get back to a profitable state.
Per the company’s blog post: “We’ve arrived at this current moment as a result of a combination of factors: four straight years of rapid, costly expansion followed by an unforeseen and financially devastating global health crisis, and an industry-wide decline in sales. Taken together, these factors have stretched our finances and company culture to a point that is simply no longer sustainable.”
Modern Times opened its “Dankness Dojo” in Los Angeles and “The Belmont Fermentorium” in Portland in 2018, followed by Santa Barbara’s “The Academy of Recreational Sciences” (pictured above) and Oakland’s “House of Perpetual Refreshment” (pictured below) later that year. It was a bold blitz of an expansion that aligned with business figures and conditions at the time, but left the company terribly overextended when COVID struck.
Given the fact tasting rooms—especially those as large, elaborate and costly as the venues Modern Times has made its name on—are paid for through direct patronage, COVID and its related restrictions made it impossible for the company to keep its octet of spots in operation. In the blog post, Modern Times’ describes its current financial state as “in immediate and unavoidable peril,” making this large-scale shuttering necessary.
Those decisions followed the recent appointment of new leadership, who assessed the situation, deemed it dire and saw the closures and compression of its sales territories as the best shot at righting the ship. In the blog post’s, its author laments the fact that the company’s decision, while a step toward keeping it from closing and providing a path toward “renewed vision and life for Modern Times”, will lead to the termination of employees staffing the done-for venues.
When reached for comment, Modern Times reported that a total of 73 employees will lose their jobs due to the closures. Together with voluntary exits, the company expects to end up at 175 total employees, down from last November’s headcount of 266.