B3 Beverage Company has completed its acquisition of Yards Brewing Company, taking full control of Philadelphia’s largest independent craft brewer after a multi-stage transaction. The deal marks a significant change for B3, which was launched in May 2025 as an East Coast contract beverage manufacturing platform involving Yards, Two Roads Brewing and Bald Birds Brewing.
The acquisition follows a USD 6.2 million investment that B3 made in Yards in November 2025 to reduce the brewery’s debt and provide working capital. B3 has also agreed to assume Yards’ remaining debt and inject additional capital, while the overall purchase price and the amount of debt still outstanding have not been disclosed. Yards founder Tom Kehoe and the existing brewery team are expected to remain with the business, with no disruption to operations or planned changes to the brand, according to Breweries in PA.
The transaction comes as B3’s original vision of a broad multi-brewery manufacturing network has changed substantially. Two Roads, one of the three companies announced as founding partners in 2025, is no longer part of B3; according to Brewbound, the proposed transaction involving the Connecticut brewer never actually closed. Heavy Seas Beer, which announced in October 2025 that it was joining the platform, subsequently backed out of its proposed transaction. A planned B3 deal involving Kentucky-based Casey Jones Distillery, announced in early 2026, was also described by B3 management as being on hold.
B3 had initially been conceived as a network capable of producing beer, RTDs, non-alcoholic beverages, seltzers, sodas and canned cocktails for third-party brands. Bald Birds contributed a 150,000-square-foot production facility in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, capable of manufacturing more than one million cases annually, while Yards brought both its Philadelphia brewery and longstanding contract-brewing relationships. The restructuring therefore leaves the acquisition of Yards at the center of B3’s beer operations rather than simply adding another brewery to the originally envisioned network.
Founded in 1994, Yards moved into its current brewery and taproom on Spring Garden Street in 2017 and produced more than 46,000 US barrels of beer in 2025. Its portfolio includes Philadelphia Pale Ale, Philly Standard Lager, Brawler Champion Ale and Trash Talk IPA. B3 CEO Joe Feerrar has indicated that the brewery’s established identity will be maintained following the takeover, making the transaction primarily an ownership and financial restructuring rather than an immediate repositioning of the Yards brand.
