On Friday, Chobani founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya announced that he’s purchased San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Co., which was closed by Sapporo USA in July 2023 after 127 years of business.
The billionaire told the Chronicle he discovered Anchor Brewing in August 2023 while reading an article about its closure. After looking further into the historic brewery, Ulukaya learned of its importance to San Francisco and found similarities between the brewery’s journey and Chobani’s. (Established in upstate New York in 2005, the Greek yogurt company got its start in a factory that was also on the brink of closure.)
“I realized how Anchor is really aligned with the city’s history,” he told the newspaper in an interview on Thursday night. “I thought, ‘Wow, what if? What if we can bring it back?’ And that excited me because I’ve been part of bringing back a factory back in upstate New York and building a brand.”
While the price of the deal was not disclosed, the acquisition includes all of the brewery’s assets including all its recipes, the Potrero Hill brewing facility, and the brewing equipment in all warehouses, which is allegedly still in good shape. Ulukaya’s plans for the brewery include modernizing Potrero Hill to get the iconic beer flowing once more throughout the Bay Area as soon as possible. Ulukaya disclosed that all he’s waiting for now is “permission from the city and alignment with the community and the people who worked there a long time.”
The city appears to
