Becoming Employee-Owned via Acquisition

Dave McLean, the founder of San Francisco's Magnolia Brewing, is someone that you might have thought of as a good candidate to sell his business to an ESOP. Instead, the company ran into difficulties and ended up in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2015, but the story does not end there. According to an article in SFGate, employee-owned New Belgium Brewing is buying the assets of Magnolia. Kim Jordan, founder of New Belgium, said the two Magnolia pubs will remain open.