Petaluma brewer Lagunitas again cuts workforce to contend with challenging US beer market

For the second time in 15 months, the crowded craft beer market is taking a toll on Lagunitas Brewing Co.

The Petaluma-based brewer said Friday it is cutting “under 5%” of its workforce, as part of a restructuring strategy.

The maker of one of the world’s most popular India pale ales, Lagunitas has been fully owned by Netherlands-based Heineken International since 2017. In October of the following year it laid off 12% of its employees, about 100 workers, citing a “more challenging” market for craft beers.

The cuts announced Friday were made “to fortify our continued global success and continue to compete in the ever changing and challenging U.S. marketplace,” CEO Maria Stipp said in a statement.

Stipp was unavailable for an interview Friday with The Press Democrat.

The statement described the company’s restructuring as being “aimed at better aligning our sales and marketing departments.”

Asked if those departments - sales and marketing - will bear the brunt of the job cuts, a company spokesman declined to elaborate on Stipp’s statement.

These latest job casualties come amid the 27-year-old company’s concerted push into overseas markets. As its domestic growth has slowed, Lagunitas is making significant inroads on the world beer stage - with help navigating foreign markets from executives at its Dutch owner Heineken, which has been around for a century and a half.

Lagunitas beers are now sold in 35 countries. In February, it opened its first international taproom - in Amsterdam, where Heineken is headquartered - with plans for others in Paris, Barcelona, London and other international capitals.

Starting with its brewery in Wijlre, Netherlands, Lagunitas also is brewing beer overseas for the first time. Stipp has mentioned Brazil as the site of the companies next overseas brewery.

“The craft explosion is everywhere,” she told The Press Democrat a year ago. “We saw it when we went to Milan. We saw it in Barcelona. We saw it in Rio. We saw it in São Paulo. It’s not just a U.S. phenomenon.” The growth overseas, she said, “is happening in a really truncated period of time.”

But that growth has not been matched on these shores. News of this latest round of Lagunitas layoffs comes at the end of what the CEO described in Friday’s statement as “a hard-fought year” for the company. Citing Nielsen data, she pointed out that Lagunitas “remains the No. 1 IPA in the country, finishing the year up 3.1% in sales,” despite “the ever changing and challenging U.S. marketplace.”