Where is Tony Magee?
A few years back, Lagunitas founder Tony Magee started an odd series of blog posts on Tumblr (remember that?). They were rambling but didactic—and inconclusive. He made a lot of strong statements, but it wasn’t clear what he was saying. At the time, craft beer was at the height of its ascent, and Lagunitas had grown to become one of the largest craft breweries in the US.
The blog, curiously, now features photos of women’s feet, but the wayback machine has all the original posts. They started before he announced that Heineken would acquire half the company, and appear to be a kind of pre-justification for why a sale to Heineken would actually be the apotheosis of craft evolution.
“We are now standing at the threshold of an historic opportunity to export the excitement and vibe of American-born Craft Brewing and meet beer-lovers all over the Planet Earth, our true homeland. This could one day even be seen as a crucial victory for American Craft Brewing. Our new Joint Venture with Heineken … represents a mutual respect society, a meeting of equals, a partnership of peers. The graduation of American Craft Brewing along with the people who brew it onto the world stage.”
This seemed a little pompous at the time, but Magee earned it—or at least earned our sincere attention. It’s extremely difficult to build a company like he did, and selling it for half a billion dollars is a remarkable win. Four years earlier, John Hall sold Goose Island for about a tenth as much. So what Magee thought about beer, the craft segment, and the future of the market carried a lot of weight. These posts came in the middle of the acquisition frenzy, at a time when it wasn’t exactly clear what would become of craft beer, and Magee had the credibility to opine.
But there was also a discordant note in his posts, an aggrieved tone of someone irritated people don’t understand the three-dimensional chess game he was playing. Looking back from 2020, this is in some ways the most interesting part of the posts. He apparently saw a tension in what he was doing and the ethos that animated craft beer—but thought he was doing the right thing for Lagunitas:
“There’s a pertinent Friedrich Nietzsche parable about a ‘madman’ who comes into a town square holding a lighted lantern declaring to the town that he has important news. He tells his story and the people laugh and berate him in disbelief, throwing stones to drive him off. Finally he gives up saying, ‘I have come too soon.’ He drops the lantern, the light goes out, and he departs.”
“Craft brewing is maturing as an industry,” he concluded. “The future will not be like the past.”
We didn’t hear from Tony again for awhile—until the news came that Heineken was buying the other half of his business. In a 2,000-word essay, he explained why he was selling the rest of the company. This post was more direct, more honest, and less conflicted. It promised less world-historical revolution, and more pragmatic integration. It also expressed what I think was a genuine belief that Lagunitas really was still his show. He wrote, without irony, that he wasn’t selling out, but buying in, and that:
“Lagunitas has truly remained an independent company since we began this trip in 2015. We have our own balance sheet, and our bank lends to us alone. That genuine autonomy allowed us to get to know our new investor/partner and figure out how to work together without anything being compulsory.”
All of that came back to me last week when the announcement came over the wires that Magee’s hand-picked CEO, Maria Stipp, was stepping down in favor of a 19-year Heineken veteran. Lagunitas had been through two rounds of layoffs, and it followed Stipp’s announcement of a restructure “aimed at better aligning our sales and marketing departments.” It’s not possible (for me) to peer into Heineken’s operations and determine whether Lagunitas still has the autonomy Magee described three years ago, or whether it is being absorbed—“integrated”—into the company. But that certainly seems possible.
Magee was right: the past few years have not been like the first 35 of the craft era. But I wonder: is this what he thought they’d look like
We know more about what happens to craft breweries purchased by international giants now, and the dangers of these acquisitions. Yet Lagunitas is a relative success story. Profits are slightly north of flat, and Lagunitas has the best-selling IPA in the US. The billion dollars Heineken paid now looks steep, but the other billion-dollar brewery, Ballast Point, completely imploded. As a long game, Lagunitas may well work out.
Magee’s silence is striking, though. As the company he built entered this new phase, he was keen to share his feelings, writing thousands of words on business, art, culture, and success. Those of us who read his Tumblr posts with fascination expected the commentary to continue. He once described himself as the madman with important news, a seer, someone ahead of his time. That contains a promise of sorts—once events unfolded, was he right? I’d love to hear a five-year report about where things stand. What’s he think about the industry now? Is this how he expected it to turn out? What about the cannabis angle Lagunitas pursued, which I assume he engineered. He’s an interesting guy with 27 years of experience who once had a lot to say.
What happened to Tony Magee?