Score another one for the little guys. Kind of.
It was announced today through a press release by BrewBound that Cigar City Brewing of Tampa, FL, one of America’s most popular and successful craft brands, has agreed to sell controlling interest of their company to Fireman Capital Partners, the Boston-based private equity firm that owns majority stakes in Oskar Blues, Perrin Brewing and the Utah Brewers Cooperative.
The groups are held under what Fireman Capital calls United Craft Brews LLC, a holding company the firm set aside specifically for the purpose of acquiring craft breweries.
It is unclear what the deal means in regards to distribution regionally or nationwide, and terms of the acquisition have not yet been disclosed. The firm has beachheads in markets like North Carolina and Michigan, so perhaps Indiana may see the famed Jai Alai IPA on shelves soon, though that is yet to be seen.
The deal positions United Craft Brew LLC as a top-15 craft producer in the US, with the underlying companies producing more than a combined 320,000 barrels in 2015.
“For me, it was a comfort level thing,” Cigar City founder Joey Redner told Brewbound. “The concern I had was that it just wouldn’t be the right fit. We had plenty of talks with A-B, and they treated us very fair throughout the process. They were surprisingly easy to deal with and, individually, they are all stand-up people. But I just felt like it wasn’t the same cultural fit.”
