(St. Louis, MO) – With craft beer hitting fever pitch in the beverage industry, more and more brewers are looking to sell. Coincidence?

Since late last year, we’ve seen reports about owners from Otter Creek, Anderson Valley, Anchor, Flying Bison and Valley Brewing all selling their breweries. For many owners, the timing is right. Generally 20 years or more in business and a craft beer boom that is driving up sales in record numbers. So, in some ways, it comes as no surprise that owners of the 19 year-old Saint Louis Brewery, makers of Schlafly beer, are reportedly looking to sell as well.

The St. Louis Business Journal reports:

“Tom Schlafly and Dan Kopman, founders of Saint Louis Brewery Inc., are in preliminary discussions about selling their stakes in the company to senior staff.

Schlafly is majority owner of the craft brewing and restaurant business. Kopman, the company’s director of operations, holds a minority stake.

Schlafly, who also is of counsel at law firm Thompson Coburn, broached the idea in a meeting earlier this month with nine members of the company’s senior management. He and Kopman told the St. Louis Business Journal they have no specific price in mind and no set timetable for a transaction.

‘My preference would be to sell most of my shares to an employee-based group at whatever the fair market price is,’ said Schlafly, 61. ‘I don’t want to take the highest bidder from a Cayman Islands venture fund. It would be more responsible to have it in the hands of someone who has a sense of stewardship, people who have helped build the company and understand what our conscience is.'”

More from The Riverfront Times:

“Among the company’s current projects are an expansion of the brewing capacity at the Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood, nearly finished, and a half-million dollars of renovations at the Schlafly Tap Room to coincide with its twentieth anniversary next year.

Kopman insists that the company is looking for a local ownership group that will maintain and build upon what we’ve created. We’re going to be living here a long time [after any sale]. We don’t want to live here and see what we’ve created diminished. We want to see the two zip codes we’ve improved get even better.”

This is something to keep an eye on though the owners contend that they are in no rush.