Anchor Brewing Company
Anchor brewed its last beer in San Francisco in July 2023 and the Mariposa Street taproom has not poured since. Hamdi Ulukaya, who founded Chobani, bought the brewery on 31 May 2024 and said, "Let's get back to work." Two years later the Chronicle photographed workers in helmets on the campus and no beer had come out.
Why go
Not yet, is the honest answer. What is worth knowing is what the building is.
Ernst Baruth and Otto Schinkel Jr. bought a San Francisco brewery in 1896 and named it Anchor.1 It burned in the 1906 earthquake and closed under Prohibition. It closed again in 1959, beaten by mass-market beer. Fritz Maytag bought 51 percent of it in 1965. Anchor Steam went into bottles in 1971. The brewery moved to Mariposa Street on Potrero Hill in 1979. The American craft beer movement is usually dated from what Maytag did with it.
Sapporo bought the company outright in 2017. Anchor's workers voted to unionize in 2019. Revenue fell by two thirds between 2016 and 2023, on Sapporo's own numbers. Then it stopped.2
Ulukaya has said nothing in public since the sale. Union members formed the Anchor SF Cooperative in 2023 and tried to buy the brewery themselves. Their board chair, Patrick Machel, told the Chronicle they have heard nothing and have moved on. Four industry sources say Anchor hired Shaun O'Sullivan of 21st Amendment as a consultant, and he has not commented. Jess Lander has been asking since the shutdown. The last answer she got from Shepherd Futures, on 1 October 2025, was Thanks for reaching out. Will be sure to reconnect when we have updates to share.
5 Shepherd Futures, the family office that owns the brewery, took a California permit to produce beer in February 2025.
Machinery runs on De Haro Street. Grain goes in and paint has come off the south wall. In July 2026 two labels carrying the original illustrated artwork won federal approval.6
What locals & experts say
- Astrid Kane, The San Francisco Standard, May 2026, on what three years of silence looks like from the sidewalk: the situation
could be characterized as 'plenty of people are going in, but no beer is coming out.'
3 - Arne Johnson, brewmaster at Rockaway Beach, who drives past daily, to the Standard:
It's an antiquated system and takes a lot of manpower.
3 - Hamdi Ulukaya, to The San Francisco Standard:
Being part of a rebirth and brand of the company and being part of maybe a new dimension of the city is pretty exciting.
4 - Austin Sharp, chief executive of Headlands Brewing, to the Chronicle in May 2026: given how long the brewery sat mothballed, he estimates Anchor could be
properly operational for 2027.
2
Good to know
- The taproom: Anchor Public Taps opened in 2017 and is shut. It was a warehouse room of picnic tables with sport on a big screen. It poured flights, and beers you could get nowhere else.7 The brewery's own page still carries the notice announcing its last summer.8
- Where: 1705 Mariposa Street, Potrero Hill. The campus runs to 2.1 acres. The building runs back to De Haro Street.
- American Craft Beer got it wrong: the trade site reported in December 2025 that Anchor was leaving San Francisco. It added a correction, and its editor blamed his use of ChatGPT.4
Verdict
listed — Watch for the beer on a shelf before you watch the door on Mariposa Street.