With less than a week left on its Wefunder campaign, San Diego-based brewery Modern Times has tapped more than $1,069,830+ from just over 1715 investors. Good times at Modern Times. Now pre-money valued at $265M, in 2013 Modern Times opened a 30bbl production brewery and tasting room in San Diego.
“Since then, we’ve posted high double-digit growth every year, pulling in $30.5M in revenue in 2018, with $37M projected for 2019. We’re one of the most successful & fastest growing breweries in the nation, with an avid following in 7 states,” said Modern Times Founder/CEO and Stone Brewing alum Jacob J McKean via the Wefunder campaign. “We currently have 5 tasting rooms in San Diego, LA, and Portland, with 3 more CA locations in construction. This raise will help take us through this next critical stage of growth.”
Modern Times beer & coffee can reportedly be found in over 7,000 retail stores and bars around the US. Wholesale accounts include Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Costco, Disneyland, Angel Stadium, and Petco Park (the San Diego Padres’ stadium). Retail accounts work in concert with Modern Times properties, creating a lift effect for both sides of the business that neither could achieve alone. Modern Times has also partnered with 25+ distributors.
Modern Times is 30% employee-owned, with the goal of remaining independent.
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Via the campaign, Modern Times addressed some the challenges of starting a brewery:
“The market has gotten vastly more competitive. Since we’ve started, it’s become much more cutthroat, but we’ve managed to thrive during that time. We’re one of the fastest growing breweries in the country, and we’ve managed something that very few, if any, other breweries have done: to be both a highly successful distribution brand and a boutique producer of highly sought-after special releases. It’s extremely difficult from both a technical and marketing perspective to pull that off, and it’s taken an enormous amount of work. But today we are able to succeed spectacularly in both chain grocery and in the uber-niche world of high-end special releases. That’s been an immense challenge, and aside from becoming employee-owned, it’s the thing I’m most proud to have accomplished.”
Modern Times plans to open new locations in Santa Barbara, Oakland and Anaheim, with no plans for national expansion:
“At this point, we really have no ambition of being a 50-state brand. I don’t think that model is working as well as it used to,”according to Modern Times. “But both from a wholesale and a retail standpoint, I think we really see ourselves as focusing on Western states for now. California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Hawaii and Idaho… We believe the bottom line will grow by about 15% in 2019. The majority of the projects that are opening in 2019 will be opening in May at the earliest, with more of the revenue coming later on in the year. So we expect about 15% growth on the bottom line in 2019.”
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