Founders Selling Majority Stake to Spanish Brewing Company

Here in Grand Rapids, craft beer is a BIG deal and Founders Brewing is a staple. It's crazy to think they are the 14th largest brewery in the US as of 2018.

Madrid-based Mahou, currently owns a 30 percent stake in Founders. After last week, documents were filed indicating that they will purchase a 90 percent stake in the company, MiBiz reports.

Founders owners Mike Stevens and Dave Engbers will retain a five percent stake after the deal is done.

Mahou's investment will allow Founders to buy out more than two-dozen minority shareholders, some of whom are family members and local business people.

Stevens told MiBiz that those investors “gave us a commitment when they probably shouldn’t have given us a commitment... To see the kind of return on the dollar that they’re able to enjoy, it really is very satisfying and rewarding, coming from a place of just a couple homebrewers — and quite frankly, I was the opposite of wealth. It is the American Dream.”

So what does this mean for Grand-Rapids based brewing company?  From the sounds of it, day-to-day operations and their leadership team should stay the same.

Stevens told MiBiz, the deal was inspired by the need to build their brands more effectivley:

It’s going to give us the opportunity to take Founders to a whole other level. And frankly, we have to. We’re a growing company. We have 650 employees. We owe it to our employees to do the best we can to protect them with jobs into the future. This is a great opportunity for us to do that.”

The deal is set to be finalized by January of 2020, as long as the State and Federal Government sign off on it.