Growth is on the horizon for Figueroa Mountain Brewing Company, the Central Coast’s second-largest beer producer after Firestone-Walker. But according to owner Jaime Dietenhofer, the best way to get there is reorganizing under Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which the company filed for on October 5.
“The good news is we have demand, but the demand is actually higher than we can do,” said Dietenhofer, a Los Olivos native who founded “Fig Mountain,” as it’s best known, with his father, Jim Dietenhofer, in 2010. The elder Dietenhofer died last year.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Fig Mountain’s production was split evenly between packaged beer and draft beer, which is more profitable. With the pandemic hitting the restaurant and bar industries so hard and people drinking more at home, demand became 80 percent packaged, and Fig Mountain started coming up short on fulfilling orders.