BeerBorg

My thoughts are that Sam is seeing all his friendly craft companies take on capital to be able to grow faster and get a bigger share of the market and this may put him in a position to grow faster as well.
I subscribe to his youtube videos and recently he mentioned a restaurant expansion as well as going into distillery. So, I'm thinking he needed money and a minority partner (likely in money only) was his best bet.

But what do I know?

I agree with you Paul. A private equity investor at a minority stake equals cash. Maybe Dogfish already has plans to expand, and just needs the cash to get it done. Maybe a plan like going west just like Stone expanded east.

I kind of had the same take on it. The investment firm isn't a beer company; it's just a money factory. Things may change (perhaps an IPO down the road, who knows?), but for the nonce, it seems just a way to finance an expansion.

Honestly, that's how I see (crossing fingers) all of the recent activity. Would I have felt better about the Lagunitas, Firestone and St Archer news if it was more like this? Yeah, but I'm not the most savvy business guy so I can only speculate.

The only problem with such firms is if they take on a majority stake. Then they can become bastards because it turns into "all about profit". (I've been there).

I am reading Sams' book about building Dogfish Head, slowly but surely. I'm at a section maybe in the first 1/4 of the book where he is talking a lot about what the business means to him. It makes me think this is all for the right reasons and steps in the right direction. I also read the Lagunitas book and the Sierra Nevada story. And while I really liked the writing in the Lagunitas book I am getting a totally different vibe from Sam in his book as far as a buisness standpoint. The underlying goal in the Lagunitas and (especially) Sierra Nevada stories seemed like it was GROWTH, GROWTH, GROTH, need to get bigger...more, more more. Sam seems very strategic , he's smart and knows what he wants. And as much as he has done on his own for his buisness and craft beer, sometimes you just can't do it all on your own.

On a side note, if you haven't read any of these 3 books they are a good read as far as "the bussiness" is concered. But honnestly I was expecting much more out of the Sierra Nevada story. He is a nice, kind soft spoken man and passionate about his employees but it didnt' make for much of a read and I found very little of what I really wanted to hear about as far as some of the ins and outs of the brewery and the beers themselves. Lagunitas on the other hand was a very interesting read. I'm not a big reader so to keep me reading it was a plus. Cool story telling, lots of inside information all the way around.

I guess "going public" has a bad stigma for me. BNSF was public until Warren Buffet bought it in 2010. When it was public everything was about pleasing the stock holders. Even bad business decisions. They would cut people in a heartbeat if it would make the stock look good. Even though it is really difficult to find qualified people and get them trained. Once Buffet bought it, he looked at the long term, he is investing in infrastructure, he doesn't want to cut people unless it is an absolute last resort because he knows how difficult it is to replace those skills.

Then I look at what the CEO did to Anhieser Busch. He went to cheaper hops, cut the recipe, stripped the business so that the stockholders were kept happy in spite of sales going down 6%.

Hopefully this won't be the case with dogfish.