R. Shea Brewing announces it will close both locations in Akron

WE WILL BE CLOSING BOTH LOCATIONS WITH THE LAST DAY BEING MARCH 3RD.

I never thought the end-of-days would actually happen. Back in November 2023 we were going into the busy holiday season and judging by historicals, the first quarter of 2024 should have been pretty good - even if it stayed flat. That would have given us some more time to figure out how to turn things around in this declining craft beer industry. We were in talks with a few potential suitors that wanted to keep the brand alive and take over operations but those fell through. Then January happened. We began to realize unprecedented 40% weekly taproom sales losses year-over-year. This wasn’t a typical ‘dry January’ type of thing - it was something else. I talked to other brewery taprooms to make sure there wasn’t something in the Akron water - there wasn’t. They were experiencing the same steep losses. People's drinking habits are changing fast, we are no longer getting the early twenty somethings consuming beer as their gateway alcoholic drink. Craft beer is getting bypassed altogether with all of the new post-Covid non-beer options on the shelf where craft beer used to be. A seismic shift is happening within the industry.

After barely making the January 12th payroll, I ran some math and determined that if I was going to be able to give my employees at least two weeks notice of closing, that I better start that process now before we run out of money if these sales trends continue. The one thing I promised my employees back in November was that if we couldn't figure things out, that I wouldn’t just ‘shut the doors’ without notice but would give them several weeks' heads-up. I love our employees and I believe that we have the ‘dream team’ right now - but it’s not meant to be anymore as much as it pains me to say.

This industry is the most challenging that it’s ever been. We have been fighting interest rate inflation, wage inflation, material inflation, steep declines in distribution and now declines in taproom sales. We can’t fight anymore. We are completely out of ammunition. There is nothing left. Our Canal Place expansion was the right place, wrong time. It was conceived on 2017-2018 economics where that equation has been totally turned upside-down due to the effects of Covid.

If there is any blame to be had, it’s me for not seeing into the future by five years and predicting the pandemic or not having deeper pockets upon doing the expansion. Most of craft beer is built on passion, with tight cash flows and little buffer during the startup phase - that describes us, a passion project. And that is when the pandemic hit - during the Canal Place startup phase when nothing had even begun to be paid off for possible refinancing, restructuring, etc. The last pandemic at least the size of Covid was the 1918 Spanish Flu. A pandemic shutting the world down, disrupting supply chains and very, very quickly (de)evolving the craft beer market was the last thing on people's minds a hundred years later. It was certainly not on my mind.

It’s certainly been a pleasure meeting and serving you over the years. Akron has been truly a wonderful and supporting city for this industry between The City, Downtown Akron Partnership and the Akron Summit Visitors Bureau. I couldn’t have asked for more support between all of you.

Lastly I want to thank my wife and son for holding down the fort (The Valley) for the past year(s) while I earnestly tried to work the problem. Without them I don’t believe we would have even gotten this far.

Look out for our last menu change happening on Wednesday the 21st which will feature a total of eight new barrel aged beers between locations on draft and available in bombers.

For those that contributed to the GoFundMe, thank you for believing in us and for the support. You are the ONLY reason why we are able to give our employees and patrons a 2-3 week heads-up on our closure. When our sales began to drop off a cliff in January, it was either and emergency use of these funds to cover payroll and figure out a proper wind-down, or shut the doors immediately with missed payroll. I’m a business owner that believes my employees deserve the respect to get at least two weeks' notice of our closure so that they can find other jobs and their paycheck is not interrupted. We employ over 50 people, many of them living paycheck to paycheck. They sincerely thank you for this. If you do not like the use of your funds, please contact us.

I wanted all of this to turn out very differently for everyone but things have a way of snowballing at the very end - especially when one is still getting thrown curve balls.