After being sold to Anheuser Busch, Four Peaks Brewery will be expanding it’s operation beyond Arizona. The brewery had rejected offers in past but felt now was the right time expand. (Photo by Nick Pope/Cronkite News)
Four Peaks Brewery will be expanding it’s operation to the West Coast later this year. The brewery was bought by Anheuser Busch in December of last year. (Photo by Nick Pope/Cronkite News)
Four Peaks has long been one of the Valley’s favorite local breweries. But now, the beer will be sold in places other than Arizona.
The brewery, which was founded in 1996, was recently sold to Anheuser-Busch. Negotiations between the two companies began in July of 2015, with the sale being finalized on March 1st of this year.
“Basically it had to do with capital expansion,” Greg Ross, Marketing Director for Four Peaks said. “We’ve been in Arizona for 19 years, we were reaching a sales level within this market that brought us to number two in the United States for breweries only selling to their home market.”
The advantages to the sale also include opportunities for long time employees to expand their responsibilities with the company.
“It was like a glass ceiling,” Timothy Neuman, Marketing Associate at Four Peaks said. “When you are only going to be distributing within Arizona there was really no place for dedicated employees to end up going after a while.”
The brewery plans on expanding to Nevada this summer and then to San Diego later this fall. However, the changes necessary for the expansion will take place right here in Arizona.
“There’s already been a couple million dollars committed to the brewery,” Ross said. “New filtration, new equipment that is going to make our beers have a longer shelf life. The beer should get better.”
“It’s going to end up freeing a lot of things that we end up doing,” said Neuman. “Since we have access to ingredients that we wouldn’t have had before.”
With the expansion coming to the brewery, some of the local supporters of the company may be worried about possible changes to the beer. However, keeping everything the same is a top priority of Four Peaks and its employees.
“As far as the recipes go, they would be foolish to change anything,” said Ross. “We’ve got a good thing going here, we make good beer, we make fresh beer, and that commitment to quality isn’t going to change.”