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PORTSIDE CULTURE

ANCHOR HAS A SURPRISE NEW OWNER. WHY S.F. SHOULD BE EXCITED — BUT
WORRIED  
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Esther Mobley
June 2, 2024
San Francisco Chronicle
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_ Anchor Brewing is more than just a beloved institution in this
city. It’s the very myth of San Francisco in a bottle. It’s a
relic of the Gold Rush, a harbinger of the it-happened-here-first
innovation that our region hopes to be known for. _

A worker at Anchor Brewing on March 28, 1978. The brewery, which
closed last year, will reopen under the ownership of Chobani
Yogurt’s CEO., Gary Fong/The Chronicle

 

Well, we didn’t see that one coming.

Of all the players who might have bought the shuttered Anchor
Brewing — the scrappy ex-employees
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the venture capitalist neighbor
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the Big Beer corporations that we all assumed were
interested — Hamdi Ulukaya, the billionaire founder of Chobani
yogurt
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was never a top suspect.

San Franciscans would be right to be skeptical of Ulukaya, who has no
apparent connection to our city or to craft beer. Especially since
he told the Chronicle
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“didn’t know Anchor existed” until last summer. Sure, he plans
to revive the old logos
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rehire as many employees as possible and begin brewing steam beer
again. Still, it’s reasonable to wonder whether he may value his new
asset primarily as a real estate investment. Could stewarding the
legacy of America’s first craft brewery, which San Franciscans know
to be a sacred honor, end up being an afterthought?

But as far as billionaires go, Ulukaya sounds like one you might
actually be able to cheer for. He has an irresistible origin story
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after growing up in a family of sheep herders in the Turkish
mountains, he immigrated to the United States with only $3,000 to his
name and launched Chobani after buying a dilapidated Kraft yogurt
factory. By giving his workers a 10% stake in Chobani, employing large
numbers of refugees and donating lavishly to charitable causes,
Ulukaya has endeared himself to the socially conscious business world.
He has amassed the accolades to prove it: honorary doctorates galore,
humanitarian awards, an appointment
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President Obama to a global entrepreneurship group. 

But that still doesn’t answer the question on San Franciscans’
minds. Does Ulukaya know what this brewery means to us? Does
he _get _Anchor?

Anchor Brewing is more than just a beloved institution in this city.
It’s the very myth of San Francisco in a bottle. It’s a relic of
the Gold Rush
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a harbinger of the it-happened-here-first innovation that our region
hopes to be known for. Anchor was a survivor, for 127 years, of San
Francisco’s periods of buoyant boom and brutal bust. Its signature
beer, Steam, can even be seen as an expression of the city’s
uniquely quirky climate: Long before temperature control was
available, Steam’s fermentation was regulated only by the cool bay
breeze.

In the second half of the 20th century, as Big Beer consolidated and
an American craft movement rose to meet it, Anchor seemed to represent
San Francisco’s stubbornly independent streak. Fritz Maytag, who
owned the brewery from 1965 until 2010, presided over its golden era.
With longtime brewer Mark Carpenter, he restored Anchor Steam’s
quality, making it one of the great American beers. They introduced
the first IPA in this country since Prohibition, Liberty Ale, reviving
the lost practice of dry hopping and setting off a trend that would
captivate a generation of brewers.

While the corporations now known as AB InBev and Molson Coors got
bigger and bigger, buying up smaller breweries, Anchor felt like proof
that it was possible to remain homegrown. That is, until 2010, when
Maytag sold
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to two former Skyy Spirits executives, who then turned
around and sold
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to Sapporo in 2017.

But even before Maytag shattered the illusion of independence, the
Anchor myth was never as pure as San Francisco would like to have
believed. Its founding, in fact, was arguably a buyout: In 1896, Ernst
F. Baruth and his son-in-law Otto Schinkel Jr. bought a 25-year-old
brewery on Pacific Street and rebranded it as Anchor. For the next 69
years, it kept getting traded among new owners, some of whom barely
managed to keep it alive. One of those owners didn’t: Anchor closed
in 1959, though it was resuscitated a year later and limped along
until Maytag’s purchase.

Like Ulukaya, Maytag was merely the latest in a series of owners to
try their luck with this beleaguered little brewery. Like Ulukaya,
Maytag was not a Bay Area native — he grew up in Iowa and moved
here to attend Stanford. Like Ulukaya, Maytag came to Anchor flush
with a fortune from an existing business empire — in his case, his
family’s washing machine company. 

So even though another owner, like the neighbors or the employees,
might have made for a better story in this next chapter of Anchor’s
life, there’s reason to be optimistic about Ulukaya. Keep in mind
that this could certainly have gone a lot worse. Anchor’s assets
could easily have been divided among multiple buyers, divorcing the
brand and beer recipes from the physical brewery and its specialized,
antique equipment. It was not a guarantee that a new owner would
continue brewing Anchor beer in San Francisco, or even continue
brewing Anchor beer at all — two things Ulukaya said he’s
committed to doing.

Then again, we’ve been burned before. In 2017, we tried to convince
ourselves that Sapporo was OK. At least it wasn’t AB InBev. And it
turned out to be a disaster: Sapporo muddled Anchor’s identity
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introducing wacky beers like blackberry IPA that would likely have
made Maytag shudder and rolling out controversial new labels
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Then, after all that, the Japanese company deflated Anchor in a series
of disheartening downsizings. First Sapporo cut
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distribution and its beloved Christmas Ale. Then it just shut down
Anchor
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The crucial difference between 2017 and 2024 is the health of the
overall craft beer market. When Sapporo came in, the craft beer
explosion was at its peak. But the wave has since crested.
Today, craft beer is stagnating, 
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in volume by 1% last year, according to the Brewers Association, after
several years of flat growth. Anchor’s shuttering last year was one
of various brewery closures
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the Bay Area has seen recently.

But that’s the power of the myth of Anchor, much like the myth of
San Francisco itself. Even when it looks like folly, a starry-eyed
prospector can’t resist the chance to come here and try to strike
gold.

_Reach Esther Mobley: [email protected]_

* San Francisco
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* culinary traditions
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* food history
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