Great Divide Founder Gearing Down as Wilding Brands Doubles Down

As Great Divide Brewing gets folded into the broader Wilding Brands portfolio — which includes Denver Beer Co., Stem Ciders, Funkwerks, Howdy Beer and a few other brands — founder Brian Dunn is looking forward to a simpler life. Meanwhile, Great Divide's new owner is excited about building on a cornerstone Denver craft beer brand.

According to Dunn, he'd been considering Great Divide's path forward for a while. “I've had to come to terms with the fact that selling it is one of the options. Getting to that point was the biggest step, I think," he says. “You give it to kids, do it your entire life, or sell it.”

Dunn started Great Divide 31 years ago; his children are grown and following their own pursuits. While the business wasn’t at a point where he felt that he needed to sell — despite the current down cycle in the industry — he ultimately recognized that he was ready to change gears.

“We could keep doing this for another ten or twenty years if we needed to. I had reached a point where I didn’t want to do it another ten or twenty years,” Dunn says. He'd been considering options for a couple of years, but nothing seemed right until the potential acquisition by Wilding. “This offer made a lot more sense. I think it's really good. And acquisition is where business goes at some point once a founder has put in their time," he notes.

Dunn will remain involved in the brand's existing consumer-facing operations, maintaining control of the Great Divide tasting rooms and outposts, including locations in Castle Rock, Lone Tree, Lakewood and Denver International Airport, as well as the taproom at 22nd and Arapahoe streets and the Barrel Bar in RiNo.

Great Divide is currently working closely with Denver Beer Co. to move production over to DBC’s Sunnyside brewery while maintaining product consistency.

“We have so many beers and do some things differently here. In order to make sure that the beer is exactly the same, it’s a pretty lengthy process,” Dunn says. There will be new production jobs at Denver Beer Co. as Wilding takes over brewing the Great Divide roster; while it’s out of his hands, Dunn hopes a large portion of his brewery staff is able to move over along with his beers.

“Our team would like to stay together. It's an amazing group of people that we have at the brewery right now,” he says. “I can't control it, but I would love to see as many people as possible go over there and stay together and keep the Great Divide culture going in that location.”

There's a lot of work ahead to make sure things look good for the beer, the brand and the staff as the transition continues, but then Dunn expects the pace to slow down considerably.

“After that, probably my work life will become simpler than running a production brewery with a sales staff and retail staff and warehouse and all,” he says. “It is currently more complicated than what it's going to be in six months, so [then] hopefully a little more time to do the things I want to do, spend time with the kids and probably less nights on email after dinner, less time during the weekend on email. I think I'll definitely be involved in Great Divide and I’ll be working for some time still, but probably less stressful.”


For Wilding, the acquisition of Great Divide made sense for its portfolio. But Charlie Berger, who founded Denver Beer Co. and later merged it with Wilding, another homegrown endeavor, also has an emotional investment in Dunn’s brand.

“I was 21 years old and my first job in the brewing industry was taking bottles off the bottling line over at Great Divide. I got into it and got excited about the industry because it really is taking some very natural ingredients, putting them together in an interesting way and creating an end product that makes people smile, makes people happy, and helps build communities,” Berger says. “And what's not to enjoy about finding a life, a career, a job and making people smile? So, very excited. Great Divide's always had a piece of my heart in a way, so having this opportunity to steward the brand now is very meaningful for us.”

Proximity was a factor, he adds, noting that the company he started was Denver Beer Co, and that the Wilding team feels strongly about the city. "Great Divide is a legacy Denver company and we're going to continue brewing this beer in Denver,” Berger says. “Great Divide is really just our neighbor. And so that makes it really easy to do this transition.”

Like Dunn, Berger says the focus is on maintaining the quality and consistency of Great Divide’s beers as existing recipes are tried on new equipment.

“It’s not an overnight switch. You've got to put beers in the tanks for weeks and weeks. And you have to work with wholesalers who have inventory already. And packaging materials need to be maybe even very slightly tweaked just to run on different equipment,” Berger says. "So it's a process. But this transition won't be too long.”

Dunn’s continued presence via licensing the Great Divide name to maintain the existing taprooms — valuable brand-builders for the company — will help to maintain continuity in the retail outlets.

The consumer shouldn’t notice any changes, Berger says. “It's exciting times. We feel like this industry has really helped build the Colorado culture, in a way,” he adds. “And is it changing a little bit? Yeah, it is a little bit, but I think maybe we've always been evolving and this is a step on that road.”