FORT COLLINS, Colo. — When Left Hand Brewing Co. co-founder Eric Wallace announced in 2015 that his company had repurchased shares from current stockholders and established an employee stock ownership plan to give its workers a majority share in the business, he emphasized that the reason for doing so was that it would keep the company from being purchased “as mere chattel” by a larger entity that would control the fate of it and its workers.
So, when New Belgium Brewing — the largest Colorado craft brewery and the first brewery in the state to move to the employee-ownership model in 2013 — announced in November that it was being acquired by Australian conglomerate Little Lion World Beverages, questions arose about not only how this would affect the state’s independent beer scene but how this would impact Gov. Jared Polis’ push to increase employee-owned companies.
Backers of the movement, after all, had emphasized in meetings of a special commission throughout the summer that passing a company along to its workers could keep management — and profits — in Colorado during a time of increasing globalization.
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