Crucible Brewing closing the Woodinville Forge
Breweries across the nation are feeling it. The beer business just isn’t bouncing back from the pandemic the way everyone hoped. On-premise beer sales, especially draft beer at restaurants and bars, just aren’t what they used to be. There are a variety of reasons for it, but the on-premise beer sales hangover is a statistical fact. On top of that, the cost of everything has drastically increased and brewers are wrestling with inflation, which is something most consumers don’t recognize.
Those are among the reasons cited by Crucible Brewing in announcing the pending closure of its Woodinville location — The Woodinville Forge. The brewery is NOT closing the Everett location. In fact, they are consolidating operations in Everett.
Crucible Brewing invites you to join them for a Farewell to the Forge party on March 4th at the Woodinville Forge. Everyone is invited for one last hurrah. Here is the official announcement from Crucible Brewing
The Crucible Woodinville Forge location will be closing permanently on March 4th. We will continue to operate our normal days and hours until this date. On our last day, on March 4th, we will be throwing a big “Farewell to the Forge” event and we would like to invite everyone out for one last beer with us at the brewery. The last 5 years at Woodinville we’ve met so many wonderful people, lifelong friends, and community members. Thank you all so much for your support all these years.
Why’s this happening?
Unfortunately, among other things, the slower than expected recovery from the pandemic has led to significantly reduced sales of beer to our outside accounts, this coupled with the skyrocketing costs of everything from CO2 to raw ingredients has made it unsustainable for us to continue to operate a second location that is mainly distribution focused. So we’ve had to make the tough decision to close Woodinville to better focus our efforts on our founding location in Everett.
What’s Happening to Crucible Everett?
Nothing! We will continue to brew and serve out of our Everett location. Business as usual. Behind the scenes we will be doing some construction and moving some tanks over to continue cranking out all your favorite beers. In fact several of our Woodinville fermenters and some of our equipment are going to be installed at Everett. We hope that by consolidating down to the single rooftop that we can weather things and hold out for the economy to recover. After this economic recovery we will be looking at additional production site options for the future.
What about the Crucible Woodinville Staff?
Several of our team members are pivoting to work at our Everett location. But unfortunately we couldn’t fit everyone up here. For those that aren’t staying on we have reached out to several other breweries in the area and also to the WA Brewers Guild to see if our staff can find a new home with them. We have been blessed with working with some incredible people and know that they will continue to grow and thrive in this industry.
Thank you again everyone for these wonderful, crazy, chaotic and fun years at the Woodinville Forge. If you have any special photos or memories of your times at Crucible Woodinville please share them with us! We would love to save these and maybe put something up in remembrance. So that we can find them easier, please use the hashtag #cruciblewoodinvillememories on Instagram and Facebook.
With love from Dick, Shawn and all of us here at Crucible Brewing