After a little more than five years and one expansion into distribution, Indiana’s Three Pints is shutting its doors. Owner Tom Hynes announced on Jan. 18 via Facebook that the production facility, which had opened in October, 2014, will cease operations in Martinsvile, Indiana.
This comes on the heels of closing the brewpub in Plainfield, Indiana, where it started as a brewery in November, 2010, this past August. “It has been a great run,” Hynes said in the statement that was met with mostly sympathy and well wishes in the future to Hynes and his family.
Three Pints employed 30 people until closing the brewpub, leaving five full-time and two part-time employees at the production facility. “Most took it well, but there were still a lot of tears (mine included),” he wrote in an email to The Brewer Magazine this week.
In the Facebook statement, Hynes acknowledged that increased competition in distribution “has been tough.” He added in his email that he found it tougher to find shelf space, new accounts and Three Pints beer was not selling at the projected rate.
“Although I have to admit that I wasn’t a particularly good businessman, I still think the single biggest factor was the intense competition here in central Indiana,” Hynes wrote. “A close second being that the distributor we were using was just too small. We tried really hard to get on with some of the bigger ones, but none were taking on any more breweries; in fact some were reducing their number.”
Hynes added that the “competitive landscape” has changed over the last 2-3 years. “It has become tougher and tougher to get a permanent tap due to the aggressive tap rotations at most bars and restaurants,” he said. “I think a telling sign is that when we first started distributing we were selling about twice as many 1/2 bbl kegs than 1/6th bbl kegs — now we easily sold three times more 1/6th bbl kegs than 1/2s.”
Three Pints was available through most of Indiana, with six beers packaged from its production facility which came in four-packs of pint-sized cans. It featured a group of six house beers: California Common, a Oatmeal Stout, an American Pale Ale, a Imperial Hefeweizen and a Czech-style Pilsner; along with three seasonals: a hoppy American Wheat, a Black IPA and a Marzen. It also produced three bomber-sized beers: a Harvest Ale, a Belgian-style Tripel and a Double IPA.
Hynes said he has already accepted a job back at his former employer as a software engineer and he will sell both the brewpub’s five bbl system along with the 30 bbl production equipment
“Although we just started, I am happy with the interest we are getting so far,” Hynes said.
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