New Belgium Brewing employee ownership (2013)
New Belgium Brewing of Fort Collins, Colorado, completed a transition to 100% employee ownership in 2013. The craft brewery, founded in 1991, became one of the largest employee-owned companies in the United States.
The employee-ownership model made workers partial owners and the company continued expanding.
In 2019, New Belgium sold to Lion, owned by Japan's Kirin Holdings, showing that employee ownership can end in a conventional acquisition.
Pepper has long dreamed of making Boloco employee-owned. New Belgium's path shows both the appeal and the limits of that model.
