How Colorado's Wilding Brands hopes to reshape the craft beer industry

Charlie Berger, Eric Foster and Brad Lincoln aren’t naive about the headwinds facing the craft beer industry. As the founders of Denver Beer Co., Stem Ciders and Funkwerks, respectively, they’ve been in the business long enough to have witnessed its heyday circa 2015, when increasingly thirsty Americans fed double-digit growth for companies like theirs.

Fast-forward a decade, however, and the scene is much different. Gone are the days when people would line up in advance for a special beer release, and tickets to the Great American Beer Festival would sell out within hours . Gone are the days when selling $7 pints could cover a brewery’s overhead . And with Gen Z drinking less than the generations that came before it, according to industry pros, a new cohort of would-be customers