This story was reported and written by our media partner the Virginia Mercury.
Armed Forces Brewing Company, submerged in debt, may have left Norfolk, but it hasn’t gone away.
The controversial military-tribute brewery’s former Norfolk facility is for sale for $5.45 million, more than $2 million above what Ironbound AFBC Properties paid only a couple of years ago. It’s also available for lease for about $410,000 annually.
The company’s board has been gutted with only Alan Beal, the chief executive officer, still present after closing its Norfolk brewery in early March. In recent emails to potential investors, Beal said he is pressing on, looking for a new home in Texas or Florida and negotiating with a contract brewer despite not raising the capital he said the company needed to continue.
Beal told investors in April that the company needed to raise seven figures by the end of the month.
He pledged that if the company did not raise at least $1.7 million by April 29 — or raised less and could not negotiate payment plans — that it would refund the new investments.
“If we fall short of this goal, we will likely be forced to completely reorganize the company, or even terminate operations,” he wrote in an April 14 fundraising email. “And remember, all funds are going to be held in escrow until we know we have raised sufficient funds to pay off or restructure the existing debt, and to relocate and to move forward with the new business plan.”
That campaign raised only $268,000, according to an email from Beal. Some of that paid former employees, a claim confirmed by one former staffer.
In email after email since April, Beal has blamed the company’s failure on a “woke mob” that spoke out after the Armed Forces July 2023 purchase of the former O’Connor Brewing for $3 million. Opponents pointed to social media posts by Robert O’Neill, Armed Forces’ former brand ambassador, board member, and the SEAL Team 6 member who claims to have killed Osama bin Laden, as offensive and reason not to support the company. O’Neill’s social media posts criticized the Navy for using a drag queen in a recruitment ad and mocked transgender people.
But former employees laid the company’s problems on Beal. Interviews with nine former employees and contractors for Armed Forces said the Norfolk taproom did not reach its revenue potential partly because of the controversy. Armed Forces suffered setbacks selling beer, notably losing market share after failing last year to pay Brew Hub, a Florida contract brewery it had been using since before the Norfolk purchase.
“The closing of AFBC had nothing to do with a “woke mob,” former mid-Atlantic sales manager Tim Labbe wrote on Facebook in March, saying he was part of a team growing sales in seven states. “We had great relationships with the major chain grocery stores in those states as well as big distributors. When Alan (Beal) stopped paying bills and stopped complying with the agreements in place that all dried up.”
Prior to the latest request for funders, the company raised about $8.5 million from more than 10,000 investors who contributed a minimum of $200. They were supposed to get rewards ranging from stickers to hats, but an April Securities and Exchange filing said the company may not be able to fulfill that promise. Armed Forces suffered a net loss of $1.76 million for the first six months of 2024. The company has failed to file its annual 2024 financial report to the SEC.
The majority of cash from investors over two years covered operating losses.
Armed Forces and Ironbound, which owns the property on 24th Street, remain in arrears on other bills. The city’s website shows that Armed Forces has unpaid property, food, and beverage taxes for 2025, but does not reveal the amount. Ironbound AFBC, which owns the brewery, owes $13,500 in real estate taxes dating back to December.
A city spokesman said the amount of the food, beverage, and property taxes owed is exempt from Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act. The city has padlocked the building with “a large amount of beer on the premises and in the tanks,” according to an April SEC filing. That means the company has no way to generate revenue fulfilling orders to distributors.
The SEC filing also reveals Armed Forces has liens against it for construction costs totaling nearly $110,000 and has been sued in Norfolk by two former employees for $15,800 over unpaid salaries. A filing by a lawyer from Oliveri & Larsen, a debt collection firm, in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, seeks to recover a “large claim” owed Barnes Beverage Group, a consulting firm. A lawyer for the firm declined to comment. Armed Forces has also been threatened with lawsuits for failing to pay three lenders a total of more than $335,000, according to the filing. Beal personally guaranteed two of those loans totaling nearly $250,000.
The three loans are in default and the filing says, “there is great uncertainty as to whether the Company will be able to pay off or pay down the loan.”
Beal has continued making promotional appearances on sympathetic, small-audience media, showing up on Real American Blue, a streaming webcast hosted by Robert “Curly” Flanagan, a retired Arizona Maricopa County sheriff and a forthcoming FloBilly Swamp Wear episode filmed in Florida.
