Los Gatos, California-based Loma Brewing Company will open a new brewery and taproom in Manteca, California, in 2023, which will support a more than 300% increase in production, founder and CEO Kevin Youkilis told Brewbound.
The 18-month project, which is expected to be completed by Q4 2023, includes a 10,000 sq. ft. brewing space and a 2,500 sq. ft. taproom, as well as an outdoor patio area, picnic table seating, and an activity space for cornhole, ping pong, and more.
The location is by the Big League Dreams softball stadium, and the Great Wolf Lodge Water Park, which Youkilis said creates the perfect environment and traffic for a brewery.
“We found that we had to move out to the Central Valley to do a project like this because we felt financially this was the right thing to do,” he said. “And the Central Valley is really needing of stuff like this.”
The brewery is about 40 minutes north of Turlock, California-based Dust Bowl Brewing, which Youkilis hopes to form a kinship with and “have fun in Central Valley,” creating a “really cool buzz of fun breweries to enjoy” with locals.
Loma operates a brewpub in Los Gatos, which produces just under 700 barrels a year. The new location would allow for rapid production growth, as well as expansion of the brewery’s consumer base beyond the Silicon Valley and Bay Area, Youkilis said.
“The Bay Area is getting unaffordable, and so a lot of people have decided to move out [around Manteca] and commute in, and we decided that we wanted to capitalize on it,” he continued. “Plus, these are some of the most important people in our lives, the blue collar workers, the people that are doing things that aren’t tech, but they’re probably more important for your daily life, like growing different product, or raising cattle or all kinds of cool stuff.”
Youkilis, a Cincinnati, Ohio-native and legendary player for the Boston Red Sox, opened Loma in 2016, after retiring from baseball. The brewery operates solely from its Los Gatos location, which Youkilis said is still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and Santa Clara County’s strict health and safety regulations.
Loma began canning some of its core beers in house in 2020 in response to pandemic-related restrictions on on-premise establishments. With business at the brewpub now at between 70% to 80% of what it was pre-pandemic, about 20% of the company’s annual production is now canned in 16 oz. 4-packs.
“During the peak of COVID, canned 4-packs made up 28% of our total production, so we have definitely seen demand for 4-packs taper off a bit, but it still remains a large portion of our sales compared to before COVID, when we had never canned anything in-house,” Justin Peck, Loma’s head brewer, told Brewbound. “Now canning is a regular occurrence every two months or so.”
Loma’s top-selling brands are its year-round core beers – Appeasement IPA (7% ABV), Jew-jitsu hazy IPA (6.4% ABV) and Youk’s Kolsch (4.9% ABV) – which are all sold in cans and draft, and accounted for 49% of the brewery’s total beer sales in 2021, according to Peck. The brewery also cans its popular seasonals, including Loma Vida lager (5% ABV), Oktoberfest (5.6% ABV) and Makeout Session blonde ale (5% ABV).
“The rest of our production is then filled out with creative one-offs spanning the entire range of styles out there to help educate our fan base about all the great styles of beer they might not have ever tried or even heard of before,” Peck said. “We like to keep things fresh and try to have a new beer release at least every other week.”
In its first year of opening, the new Manteca facility could produce up to 2,000 barrels of beer, Youkilis predicted, which would nearly quadruple the brewery’s current annual production. Only about 200 barrels of that will be earmarked for initial wholesale accounts, which the brewery has intentionally avoided pursuing.
“Getting on shelves is harder than ever, just because of the local competition,” Youkilis said. “So what’s the best way to do that is to try to raise capital and try to open up taprooms.
“What we’re pushing for is the ability to try to get those six taprooms off of our manufacturing license that is allowed in California,” he continued. “To us, that’s an easier game to win than to try to fight and get on shelves.”
While the Manteca facility is under construction, the brewery will still focus on its Los Gatos brewpub and getting the location back to 100% of the business it had pre-pandemic. The location recently added a smoker for smoked meats and food specials, and will start hosting live music and DJs on the weekends.
“We want to be the community gathering space that actually brings people back to normalcy,” Youkilis said. “We want to help guide people back to 2019 or early 2020, where we didn’t worry about COVID, we worried about just going out and enjoying our lives after tough weeks of work.”
Loma to Explore MA Expansion Following Owner’s New Red Sox Gig
Loma will continue its focus on the California market in 2022, but Youkilis isn’t forgetting about his fans in Massachusetts. Plans to get Loma beer into the state are “on a low simmer right now,” he said, adding that he is personally working on a way to make it happen. Two of Loma’s beers – Appeasement and Greek God of Hops double IPA – were temporarily available in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in 2018, through a contract brewing partnership with Harpoon Brewery.
Plans might be easier with the recent announcement that Youkilis will be doing 50 Red Sox games for New England Sports Network (NESN) this year as a color analyst. He kicked off the new gig Thursday, joining play-by-play announcer Mike Monaco for NESN’s broadcast of the Red Sox first spring training game.
Despite the cross-country commute, Youkilis said he will still be “heavily involved” with the brewery, and doesn’t have to be physically present to continue his job as CEO. To help, his business partner and Loma general manager Dan Reineke will take over as COO, and help run day-to-day operations with the rest of the brewery’s managerial staff.
“This is my baby in so many ways, I’m super proud of it, so I’ll never ever not be a part of it,” Youkilis said. “I’m there to look over the numbers, market the brand as best I can, meet with people, try to be with people in Boston to try to get this thing to Boston, and all those little ties to grow the brand.”
While in Massachusetts, Youkilis also hopes to use some of his local connections to explore adding spirits and RTDs to Loma’s offerings. Plans for the new Manteca location include a dedicated area for distilling, and the company is actively exploring how to get a distilling license in California, as well as hiring a distiller.
“We plan to try to implement [spirits] in because we feel like that is the trend of where things are going with RTDs, but we also get this ability to make draft cocktails,” Youkilis said. “We make a lot of cocktails that we just put on tap, and we found that it’s a win-win for a lot of reasons. One, just as a business owner, you’re not getting heavy pours, but it’s more because [of] consistency. Every time somebody has a cocktail on draft, it always stays consistent.”
Loma launched its first beyond beer offering, Cougar Juice hard seltzer, in January 2021. Available on tap in the brewpub, the hard seltzer’s name is in reference to the Los Gatos area (los gatos is “the cats” in Spanish).
Youkilis noted that any new offerings or expansions will come about slowly and will be approached with care, adding that he doesn’t want to grow the brewery just for the sake of it, and that maintaining employees and a “great team” is more important than expansion.
“We’re not going to try to outgrow ourselves too soon,” he said. “Because we’ve learned a lot of lessons from other people about growth, and growth is always great, but there’s also negative growth.
“We’re just trying to get fans,” he continued. “As a baseball player, it’s kind of cliché in some ways, but that’s what we’re doing. We want a fanbase that loves us and enjoys us and is going to come out and support us.”