Metro Times Reporting Bigalora Owners to Buy Arbor Brewing Company

by Tom Perkins | Detroit Metro Times

The Detroit Metro Times is reporting that a deal is in the works for the owners of the Neapolitan-style pizza company Bigalora to buy the Arbor Brewing Company’s entire U.S. operation.

The latter runs the ABC BrewPub in Ann Arbor, the ABC Microbrewery (formerly The Corner Brewery) in Ypsilanti, and distributes statewide. It also has a small stake in a brewery in Bangalore, India, but that doesn’t appear to be part of the sale.

A Bigalora spokesman said the deal isn’t finalized, though an announcement is planned for later this week. He stressed that it doesn’t involve the Livonia-based Bigalora company, but its owners “who own a number of other brands/companies across multiple industries, [and] will also soon own ABC.” He declined to comment further until the announcement is ready, and it isn’t clear whether ABC owners Matt and Rene Greff are selling all of the company, or a controlling stake.

The Greff’s motivations for selling also aren’t known, and Rene Greff couldn’t be reached immediately for comment.

In February 2015, we wrote about the multilevel controversy over ABC’s decision to launch a crowdfunding campaign to raise $75,000 for a build out of the Microbrewery’s kitchen. Customers and others in the Ypsilanti business community took issue with the Greffs asking for money while they documented their world travels on social media. In one picture posted to Twitter (above) during the campaign, the couple toasted bloody Marys from first class seats at the start of a trip that they wrote would take them to Miami, Barbados, India, Belgium, Italy, and Poland.

Read the rest of Perkins’s article here.