Stone Brewing is down an executive following the resignation of its Chief Operating Officer, Pat Tiernan.
Reached by GBH, the San Diego brewery confirms Tiernan has stepped down, but declined to specify why he resigned, who might replace him, or if there were any other resignations.
“We do not have a statement on this, simply based on the fact that there’s nothing more to share,” says a company spokesperson via email. “I can, however, confirm that it’s an accurate fact.”
Tiernan had been with the company since September of 2012, according to his LinkedIn profile, serving as COO as the brewery built out new facilities in Richmond, Virginia and Berlin, Germany. In fact, Tiernan served as a de facto point man for the Richmond project, having handled a considerable amount of press correspondence related to the expansion, starred in a video produced by the city’s economic development agency about the brewery, and even spoke about it at the governor’s mansion as the company readied itself for construction.
Tiernan’s resignation, however, comes on the heels of a number of high profile personnel shakeups at the nation’s ninth largest craft brewery by volume. Most significantly, in August of last year, the company named a new CEO in Dominic Engels. Leaving his former post as president of POM Wonderful, Engels supplanted Stone founder and then-CEO Greg Koch, who in turn assumed the post of executive chairman. Stone proceeded to cut “approximately 5%” of its workforce about a month later, eliminating more than 50 jobs in the process. These two events were preceded by the June 2016 departure of longtime brewmaster Mitch Steele, who left to open a new brewery of his own in Georgia. Former Stone brewmaster Peter Wiens, meanwhile, was named the first brewmaster of Guinness' new Stateside brewery this past June.
We’ll update this story as it develops.
—Dave Eisenberg