Many thought they were crazy to launch a brewery with saison as their flagship, back in 2010, but for Colorado-based Funkwerks, the old mantra of “do one thing well” is a guiding philosophy. Their narrow focus on Belgian-style beers, compelling brand, and methodical approach to brewing award-winning beer put them on the radar of bigger breweries (including some “macros”) as a potential acquisition target years ago, but the announcement of their recent minority equity sale to Brooklyn Brewery and the marketing partnership that comes with it keeps them within the “craft” fold and firmly in control of their own brewery. We sat down and talked to Cofounder Brad Lincoln about the history behind the investment, and what the future holds.
CBB // From your perspective, what pushed Gordon and you to the point where you started looking for a larger partnership, funds to expand, or the support from someone with additional business expertise to continue growing the brewery?
FW // About two years ago, we started talking about expanding out into other states and the successes and failures we’d had, and it became apparent to us that we always fit really well into distributors’ portfolios because we do different styles of beer that are underrepresented. So they’re always game to have us. But that doesn’t mean that they support us afterward because they have to support their bigger players who are making them more money. But also, part of it is that we weren’t always doing our best to support them, and it became clear that we needed to make some changes in that area. Since that time, we’ve been approached fairly regularly by other breweries and brokers who’ve asked if we’re interested in selling, but the problem with that is that we didn’t really want to get out of brewing or leave the brewery—that didn’t feel right. At the same time, you realize that if they don’t buy you, they’re going to buy your competitor and resource them, so you risk being marginalized even more. There’s been a general industry trend of ABI buying up players, which certainly hasn’t stopped since that time. Acquisitions by ABI and other large globals will most likely continue to grow. Because of that, we started thinking about what we wanted to do and discussed it with many different people. One of those people I discussed it with was [Dave] Duffy of Brooklyn, whom I’ve known for almost as long as the brewery has been open. Another was JB Shireman [of First Beverage Group], who lives here in Fort Collins and whom I’ve known just as long. So we discussed it with Brooklyn, and JB helped us out, and we ran through the potential options that we had.