Athletic Brewing Company to Produce Non-alcoholic Beer in Former Ballast Point Facility

Connecticut-based craft non-alcoholic beer maker Athletic Brewing Company announced the acquisition of the assets of the former Ballast Point facility in the Miramar area of San Diego.

Athletic’s Stratford, Connecticut-based facility produced 10,000 barrels in 2019, but the company was hampered by production constraints. The California production facility will increase the company’s capacity “tenfold” to meet growing demand.

“We’re just setting up Athletic for a long, stable flight path,” co-founder Bill Shufelt said. “Our biggest priority has always been a stable career for our teammates and work life balance for our team, and then letting demand pull as hard as it wants. We do everything debt free so that we don’t have to grow 20% year over year in any year. We just do want to grow like to where the market pulls us and is sustainable for our company.”

“Right now, we’re up over 500% tracking where we were last year, but a lot of last year was dictated by really tight capacity, unfortunately,” Shufelt said of sales through the first two months of 2020. “So we’re super thankful for really good distribution and retail partners who’ve been such patient supporters while we make these investments and build out to get on track.”

Shufelt expects the facility to be online by April 1 and delivering their non-alcholic beer by mid-May. He added that the latest funding round will help Athletic make around $5 million in upgrades to the facility.

Shufelt, who co-founded Athletic with John Walker and launched the brand in 2018, will be moving to San Diego to lead the company’s California operations. Walker will remain in Connecticut.

Athletic hopes to hire a dozen employees for the California facility and some team members will also be making the move. Email resumes to jobs@athleticbrewing.com.