USA: City Brewing Co. ready to benefit from an anticipated 30% increase of La Crosse beverage production

The City Brewing Co. is interested in acquiring additional brands and facilities, and anticipates a 30 percent increase in beverage production this year in La Crosse, company officials said June 20, La Crosse Tribune posted June 22.

A press conference was held on the Bosshard family becoming majority owners of City Brewing.

Sabina Bosshard, her husband George Parke III, and her three brothers, Kurt, Bill and John Bosshard III, are buying out most of the other owners. Sabina, who with Kurt has been part owner since 2000, acknowledged the family will pay millions of dollars to do so. She declined to say how many millions, or exactly what percentage the family will own.

The other continuing owners will be Brian and Ralph Morello, who own Beloit Beverage Co., a large beer distributor in Beloit, Wis.; Hornell Brewing Co. of Lake Success, N.Y., which owns the AriZona ready-to-drink tea line of products; and a number of brewery employees.

A group of 12 investors bought the company’s assets from New York investors Jim Strupp and John Mazzuto in 2000. Strupp and Mazzuto bought the former G. Heileman Brewery in 1999 and renamed it City Brewery. It ran into financial trouble under Strupp and Mazzuto but became successful under the 12 investors.

Although it has its own brands, the brewery mostly makes beverages for other companies under contract, Sabina Bosshard noted.

City Brewing is interested in acquiring other brands, Bosshard said. “If the right brand could be found in perhaps a niche market that would be something that we could manage, then we would be interested in that,” she said.

“The message we’d like to give is that the brewery is doing well. It’s going to continue to do even better,” Bosshard said. “And speaking for myself and my brothers, we intend to be involved with the brewery for a long, long time.”

“I’m excited because the Bosshard group brings steady leadership, continuity toward I think a vision of steady growth,” said Kenn Yartz, the company’s chief operating officer. “We are looking at other facilities nationally.”

Yartz said production at the La Crosse brewery is expected to increase 30 percent this year from 2005, when it produced about 1.6 million barrels of beverages. A barrel represents about 31 gallons.

The growth has been led by flavored malt beverages such as Mike’s Hard Lemonade and nonalcoholic beverages such as tea, energy and soft drinks, Yartz said.


Founded 1858 by Gottlieb Heileman, the City Brewery and its later incarnation, the G. Heileman Brewing Co., was a proud part of the La Crosse business scene for decades.

During the 1970s, Heileman beer was the No. 1 seller in the Chicago area. A 1970s-era television police drama called “Hill Street Blues,” had in its opening credits a scene of a squad car going past a corner tavern that had a prominent “Heileman’s Old Style” sign over the door.

Hard times came after the brewery was acquired by Australian brewer Alan Bond in 1987, who bought the company for $1.26 billion. The company declared bankruptcy in 1991, was purchased by a Dallas investment firm, went through bankruptcy again and finally was sold to Stroh, which got out of the beer business in 1999.

New York investors Jim Strupp and John Mazzuto bought the brewery, and a few years later a group of twelve local investors bought them out.

The result was City Brewery — which makes several local brands of beer but lives primarily through contract brewing and the production of ice tea and other products.

In early June, the Bosshard family, which had been among the 12 original owners, announced that it had bought out some of the other 12 investors to become majority owners.

E-malt.com, the global information source for the brewing and malting industry professionals. The bi-weekly E-malt.com Newsletters feature latest industry news, statistics in graphs and tables, world barley and malt prices, and other relevant information. Click here to get full access to E-malt.com. If you are a Castle Malting client, you can get free access to E-malt.com website and publications. Contact us for more information at marketing@castlemalting.com .