Bourbon and Beer Maker Files Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

Craft brewery bankruptcies piled up through 2025 and into 2026 as falling alcohol consumption, stubborn cost inflation and a more cautious American drinker squeezed an industry already running on thin margins. Goodwood Brewing & Spirits became one of the more visible casualties, filing for Chapter 7 liquidation on June 22 amid lawsuits, back taxes and millions in alleged debt.

At a Glance

• U.S. craft beer production fell 5.1% in 2025, with the number of breweries shrinking 2.9%, per Brewers Association data.
• Total beverage alcohol volumes dropped 5% in 2025, according to preliminary IWSR figures — beer down 5%, wine down 6%, spirits down 4%.
• Goodwood Brewing filed Chapter 7 on June 22 after closing its taprooms, owing the IRS more than $400,000 and facing multiple rent suits.
• Gallup found just 54% of U.S. adults now say they drink alcohol, a record low in a trend dating to 1939.
• Other recent failures include 3rd Level Brewing, The Brewer's Art and Magic City Brewing Co.

The numbers behind the contraction

The headline figures are grim, but they reward a closer read. The Brewers Association logged a 5.1% decline in craft production last year and a 2.9% contraction in the number of operating breweries. That second number matters more than the first: it signals businesses disappearing, not just slowing.

IWSR's US Navigator put total beverage alcohol volumes down 5% for 2025, and the weakness was broad rather than category-specific. Beer slid 5%, wine fell 6% and spirits dropped 4%. The lone bright spot was ready-to-drink beverages, off just 1% and still picking up market share. That gap is telling. Drinkers aren't necessarily abandoning alcohol wholesale; many are reallocating toward cheaper, more convenient formats.

Cost is doing much of the steering. IWSR's Bevtrac consumer research found 31% of U.S. drinkers cite price as a reason for cutting back, making it the single most common driver of moderation in the market. That framing is worth holding onto, because it complicates the popular narrative that Americans have simply gone sober.

Are people drinking less, or spending more carefully?

Both, and the distinction has consequences for which breweries survive. IWSR Managing Director Marten Lodewijks argues that drinkers are not broadly trading down so much as getting choosier. "Consumers are becoming more selective about where they allocate their alcohol spending, increasingly evaluating purchases based on their own price-to-quality ratio," he said. In his read, people will still pay up — but only when a product clearly earns the premium.

That's a higher bar for a regional craft label competing against national hard seltzers on a crowded shelf. RTMNexus CEO Dominick Miserandino put it bluntly when describing the shift in behavior. "Americans have switched from brewery to the likes of White Claw and other lighter drinks as well as watching the budget," he said. "You're not gonna try specialty things." His point: when wallets tighten, experimentation is the first thing to go, and experimentation is exactly what specialty brewers sell.

There is also a genuine demand-side erosion that no pricing strategy fixes. Gallup's annual Consumption Habits survey, fielded July 7-21, found the share of U.S. adults who say they drink has fallen to 54% — the lowest reading in a trend the firm has tracked since 1939, down a point from the prior low. Just as notable, a majority of Americans now believe moderate drinking is bad for their health, the first time that view has held the majority since Gallup began asking in 2001. Health perception, once a tailwind for "drink less but better" marketing, is starting to cut against the whole category.

Goodwood's collapse was about more than the market

It would be tidy to file Goodwood Brewing & Spirits under "victim of a shrinking category." The court record suggests something messier. The company faced operational and financial problems that went well beyond the macro pressures hitting every operator, and the timeline reads like a business unraveling on several fronts at once.

According to Louisville Business First, Goodwood shut its Owensboro restaurant and taproom at 101 Frederica St. on April 26 — one day before a Daviess Circuit Court judge entered a near-$100,000 default judgment against its owners over unpaid rent. Judge David Payne awarded landlord Entertainment at the Enclave $99,604.96 plus court and attorney fees, after the landlord alleged more than $120,000 in unpaid rent going back to November.

The same outlet had reported earlier in the spring that the company was in the middle of an ownership transition while fielding multiple lawsuits over nonpayment of rent, services and taxes. The Lexington Herald-Leader added that Goodwood owes the IRS more than $400,000 in back taxes and had rent trouble at another site. A March 6 suit filed in Jefferson Circuit Court by Goodwood's landlord claimed roughly $225,000 in unpaid rent for January, February and March, plus unpaid property taxes tied to the Whiskey Row location.

Stack those up and the bankruptcy looks less like a sudden shock and more like an inevitability. Under Chapter 7, a trustee is typically appointed to liquidate whatever assets remain and distribute proceeds to creditors under bankruptcy law. As of the filing, no breakdown of debts, assets and creditors had been made public. The company's website was taken down, and its Facebook page hadn't been updated since March — a quiet ending that preceded the formal one.

A pattern repeating across the country

Goodwood is not an outlier. The Chapter 7 filings have come in clusters, and the operators behind them tell variations of the same story.

In Texas, 3rd Level Brewing LLC filed in April, citing financial distress and industry headwinds. Owner Clint Bradley initially struck a defiant note, telling TheStreet's Kirk O'Neil the brewery would keep pouring until forced to stop. "We'll see how this plays out," he said. "We're going to operate as normal until someone tells me I have to stop operating." That fight appears to be over — local reporting indicates the brewery has closed, and Yelp lists it as such.

Maryland lost The Brewer's Art, a Baltimore mainstay that abruptly shut down before filing Chapter 7 in February to liquidate. Court records show Old Line Brewers LLC petitioned the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maryland on Feb. 13, listing $100,000 to $1 million in assets against $1 million to $10 million in liabilities.

That same month, Akron's heavy-metal-themed Magic City Brewing Co. LLC filed Chapter 7 after closing its brewery and two taprooms. Per the Akron Beacon Journal, the company shut its Merriman Road taproom ahead of a Feb. 3 announcement that it would also close its flagship brewery and taproom on Manchester Road on Feb. 14.

What the recent filings have in common

Reading the trend without overstating it

The temptation is to wrap every closure in the same "Americans quit drinking" headline. The evidence supports a more layered conclusion. Consumption is genuinely declining, and the health-perception shift Gallup captured suggests that drag could persist rather than reverse. But cost pressure, a fragmenting category that favors RTDs over specialty beer, and in Goodwood's case a balance sheet buried under unpaid rent and back taxes all matter too.

Miserandino's "all of the above" assessment is the honest one. For brewers, the through-line is that the margin for error has narrowed sharply. When drinkers buy less and scrutinize every dollar, the operators carrying debt, fighting landlords or relying on customers willing to splurge on the unfamiliar are the ones most exposed. The 2.9% drop in brewery count says the shakeout is already underway, and nothing in the consumption data points to a quick rebound.