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A year after opening, controversial Norfolk brewery closes

Published

19 hours ago

March 10, 2025

Staff Editor

virginiamercury.com – Jim Morrison – 2025-03-10 14:23:00

A year after opening, controversial Norfolk brewery closes

by Jim Morrison, Virginia Mercury
March 10, 2025

When Norfolk’s City Council approved the permit for the controversial Armed Forces Brewing Company over some neighborhood objections, several members said let the marketplace decide its fate.

It didn’t take long.

A year after opening its doors, Armed Forces is closing, after a raucous launch when hundreds of community members opposed what they said was a divisive business whose marketing glorified violence, threatened LGBTQ people and said those with different views don’t love America.

A military-themed brewery sparks a fight in a Virginia military city

Early Thursday afternoon, Nicole Couch, the taproom manager, got a call from Alan Beal, the company’s chief executive officer, with the news employees had been expecting. The company had been bleeding red ink for years. A reconfigured board had met that morning and told Beal to “lock it up” and close the Norfolk facility after only 13 months.

Couch, a local beer industry veteran who had worked to revitalize what she called grim taproom attendance after being hired in June, realized she couldn’t tell her staff the news by text. She sent an emergency message saying the taproom would not open that day. Minutes later, they agreed to meet at Smartmouth Brewing in Norfolk that night.

There, she told them they had lost their jobs. She’d hoped Beal would issue an official statement after their phone call, as he’d told her he would in 30 minutes. He didn’t. Employees discovered the news and his statement by checking Facebook during the meeting. They were appalled that Beal was blaming Norfolk residents for the failure.

“There was no thank you (to the staff). It was all woe is me,” she said.

“Our ability to profitably operate in Norfolk was severely affected by the local woke mob – a few individuals in the area who have no love for the traditional American values we hold as a company,” Beal wrote, concluding that the taproom and brewery would go up for sale. “These people spread outright lies about our company, our employees and our shareholders before we even opened our doors.”

But interviews with nine former employees and contractors for Armed Forces suggest that local opposition played a smaller part than Beal’s claims. They said the Norfolk taproom, where customers ebbed and flowed depending upon events, did not reach its revenue potential partly because of the controversy. But Armed Forces ultimately 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, 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.”

Former employees were believers until they weren’t

The stories from former employees are strikingly similar. They joined Armed Forces believing in the mission to support veterans and first responders. They stayed even though paychecks occasionally were late, their suggestions to improve the business were ignored, bills were not paid, some charitable obligations were not met, and key repairs and improvements to the brewing operation languished for weeks because Beal said there was no money. The few employees covered by health insurance paid by the company learned in November it would be canceled on Feb. 1.

Beal, they said, focused more on marketing and luring investors than making the brewery profitable, funding promotions with NASCAR, the Norfolk Tides and numerous other events while improvements and repairs to the brewery languished.

Beal did not respond to a voicemail message or messages sent to two of his Facebook profiles requesting comment.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Armed Forces’ move to Virginia in July 2023, touting $300,000 in incentives. A spokesman for the Virginia Economic Development Partnership said Armed Forces qualified for $24,500 in hiring support, but did not apply for it. It’s not clear if any other incentives were paid. Sean Washington, Norfolk’s head of economic development, said the city did not provide any funding to the company.

Norfolk City Council OKs controversial military-themed brewery

As it ramped up the Norfolk operation, the company raised about $8.5 million from more than 10,000 investors who ponied up a minimum of $200 in what was essentially a crowdfunding campaign. Contributors got rewards ranging from stickers to hats, although some former employees who invested said they never arrived. Those investors have no voting rights, and the company says it is uncertain if it will ever issue dividends. The stock cannot be sold on the open market.

Armed Forces suffered a net loss of $1.76 million for the first six months of 2024, according to a recent Securities and Exchange filing. The company lost $2.4 million in 2023. According to the filing, the company had net cash of $12,239 on June 30, 2024, down from an originally unaudited reporting of $381,370 and down from $282,549 on Dec. 31, 2023.

It appears from SEC filings that Armed Forces burned through the majority of cash from investors over two years to cover operating losses.

Failure to pay contractors signals problems

John Galanti, who has worked in beer sales for nearly four decades, came aboard Armed Forces in March 2022 as national sales director. Galanti left the company in July 2024 after learning it pulled back from pricing and promotional agreements with Publix, a chain of 900 stores in Florida, and had failed to pay Brew Hub, a contracting brewery in the state.

“You can’t survive in Florida without having Publix,” he added.

Galanti said he’d heard rumors about the failure to pay and the refusal of Brew Hub to release beer to distributors but there always were excuses. When he confirmed that was the case, he gave notice.

“I didn’t want any part of anything like that,” he said.

He advised the company against purchasing the former O’Connor Brewing facility for $3 million in 2023, far above the $1.86 million assessed value, according to city records.

“I would have gotten something a lot smaller,” Galanti said. “I’ve been doing this 37 years, so my advice was find some small locations of some brewers that were looking to sell. It would have probably been about a quarter of the price of what they paid (for O’Connor). But again, I stayed out of that because they were just like, ‘We’ll handle this part.’”

A $549,000 annual rent

Armed Forces Brewing does not own the former O’Connor property, according to SEC filings. It is owned 72% by a third party, Ironbound AFBC Properties, LLC. Armed Forces has a 10-year lease and an option to purchase after the first year.

The third-party owners include Evan Almeida, listed as a principal in Ironbound. He has a property investment firm in New Jersey and is also an owner of EmpireATM, a company with multimillion-dollar revenues. He and his brother, Michael, are listed as $50,000 to $99,000 investors on the Armed Forces site.

Ironbound, according to city records, is overdue on a $4,600 tax bill and owes nearly $13,000 overall.

According to the SEC filing, Armed Forces’ lease with Ironbound calls for $549,600 payments in 2024 and 2025 with increases after that. Galanti called that rent “an insane amount of money.”

Galanti thinks the company could have been successful by dominating a few grocery store markets rather than opening a taproom and focusing on attracting investors.

“It’s great if you’re trying to get investors, but the bottom line is you have to sell beer because investors can come and go,” he added.

Beal is paid an $87,000 salary. The rent on his Norfolk apartment is covered by the company. He uses a leased company vehicle. He now owns 7% of the voting stock, down from 27.5% according to SEC filings, including an amended one that appeared on Monday reporting the Norfolk closure. He said in his announcement the company would relocate to friendlier territory, but Galanti and others formerly involved with the company said that’s unlikely.

Civil actions filed in Norfolk, Portsmouth and Henrico seek payment of bills, but the brewery’s former employees say the problem is much deeper. A hops provider from the Midwest posted that the company owes him $2,600. Allen Fabijan, who runs an advertising and marketing company, connected with the company following the initial controversy when Armed Forces’ impending arrival in Virginia was announced.

The controversy centered on social media posts by Robert O’Neill, a former board member and brand ambassador, which criticized the Navy for using a drag queen in a recruitment ad, mocked transgender people and refused to wear a mask on an airplane during the COVID-19 pandemic. Shortly after the company’s purchase, he was arrested in a Dallas suburb for public intoxication and misdemeanor assault after a security guard who attempted to help him from a bar to his room told police he called him a racial slur. O’Neill was removed from the company’s website, but later reinstalled.

Fabijan said he often works supporting veterans and first responders so he was eager to partner with Armed Forces.

“I was like, wow, what a great partner this will be for the community because they’re going to give back to the causes that I feel matter,” he said. He orchestrated their opening and did other work, but was only paid a deposit.

“It was always an excuse, another excuse, another excuse. ‘Oh, we’ll get it taken care of,’” Fabijan added. He estimated that Armed Forces owes him about $20,000.

Charity work questions

In a March 2024 press release, Armed Forces reported that a portion of sales were distributed through the AFBC Veterans’ Foundation to organizations “that help homeless veterans, combat PTSD, and address the veteran suicide crisis.”

Beal told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo about the foundation. But the IRS revoked its tax-exempt status for failing to file tax returns for three consecutive years. During the interview, he also cited donations to Code of Vets, organized by Gretchen Smith, an investor. That charity’s nonprofit status also has been revoked by the IRS and its site is dark.

The latest SEC filing reports that Armed Forces made $176 in charitable donations during the first six months of 2024.

When charity events he proposed began to fall apart, Fabijan started recommending other veteran-owned breweries in the area (Beal is not a veteran).

“I’m one person of many that they screwed over,” Fabijan added. “Do I understand the pushback that was coming from certain members of the community that didn’t want to support the brand? Do I think that it was slightly over the top? Sure. But overall, the issue there wasn’t the community. The issue was that he (Beal) burned the bridges of the people that could help.”

What could have been

Galanti is a religious man and a veteran who is on the board of DDSVets, a nonprofit that provides service dogs to veterans, active-duty military and first responders. He thought Armed Forces handled the LGBTQ+ controversy poorly.

“I’m a big, firm believer in God,” he said. “You accept everybody.”

He saw Armed Forces as a way to merge his passion for beer and helping veterans.

“They actually had a great concept,” he said. “It really is a shame, because it could have really benefited a lot of people, a lot of veterans.”

Couch, a military spouse, stayed through delayed paychecks and denials to fund little things like a $200 bingo set that might improve taproom attendance. She believed the narrative with the neighborhood could be changed by talking face to face and revising the tenor on social media. She grew protective of her team and thought the taproom was turning a corner. The first few days of March yielded revenue equal to the first half of February. She had events – retirements, fundraisers, celebrations of life – scheduled for March and April.

Taproom employees, including her, have been told they will not receive their final paychecks. They have not heard directly from Beal and they have not been let into the brewery to get their personal items.

They deserved better, she said. “We had a really cool team,” Couch added. “We had a really great team.”

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Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Samantha Willis for questions: info@virginiamercury.com.

The post A year after opening, controversial Norfolk brewery closes appeared first on virginiamercury.com

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Federal bill would cut DC budget by $1 billion, force layoffs, officials say | NBC4 Washington

Published

4 hours ago

March 11, 2025

Staff Editor

www.youtube.com – NBC4 Washington – 2025-03-11 05:01:40

SUMMARY: A federal bill could cut Washington, D.C.’s budget by $1 billion in six months, potentially leading to major layoffs of police, firefighters, and teachers, alongside drastic service reductions. If passed, the cuts could adversely affect public safety, education, the Metro system, and health services, while jeopardizing essential capital projects and the city’s bond rating. Mayor Bowser stated these measures would be devastating, with no federal funds involved. Efforts by Delegate Norton to amend the resolution are ongoing. The cuts may hinder plans for a new stadium for the Commanders, putting many vital initiatives at risk for D.C.

The House GOP’s spending bill puts D.C. in a highly unusual situation, leaders say. News4’s Mark Segraves reports.
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News from the South - Virginia News Feed

The Democratic Party of Va. will pick a new leader this month. Here are the candidates’ platforms.

Published

5 hours ago

March 11, 2025

Staff Editor

virginiamercury.com – Charlotte Rene Woods – 2025-03-11 04:29:00

The Democratic Party of Va. will pick a new leader this month. Here are the candidates’ platforms.

by Charlotte Rene Woods, Virginia Mercury
March 11, 2025

Ahead of this year’s gubernatorial and House of Delegates elections, the Democratic Party of Virginia will elect a new leader to be its face and voice at a meeting on March 22.

Unlike the legislative and executive elections this year where candidates will traverse the state or certain districts to plead their case to the masses, DPVA chair hopefuls have a few weeks to convince their colleagues they’re right for the job in this intra-party contest.

Contenders come from within DPVA committees and include a state senator.

When longtime DPVA Chair Susan Swecker announced she was stepping down last month, Sen. Lamont Bagby, D-Henrico, emerged as an all but shoe-in successor. As the current chair of Virginia’s Legislative Black Caucus, he also chairs the Senate’s transportation committee and serves on various other committees. His bid for DPVA chair came with a long list of endorsements from prominent Democratic leadership in Virginia to include Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger.

Then activist and organizer Josh Stanfield entered the race, along with DPVA steering committee member and 10th Congressional District Chair Zach Pruckowski. Both are running on a platform of “empowering” other members of the party organizing apparatus and exploring the potential for the DPVA chairperson to be a full-time position.

Each man is currently making their case to their counterparts in the DPVA apparatus ahead of their election later this month.

With the House of Delegates up for election this year, Democrats will need to keep a majority to advance constitutional amendments that would enshrine voting, reproductive and marriage equality rights into Virginia’s constitution. DPVA also has a role to play in supporting gubernatorial, lieutenant governor and attorney general candidates this year.

Who’s who in this race?

As the co-founder and executive director of Activate Virginia, Stanfield is no stranger to political organizing or public engagement. The organization has worked to recruit candidates to run for office and has advocated for not accepting money from Virginia’s utility monopolies, which have heavily funded lawmakers and successfully lobbied for legislation that benefited them for years.

Key changes he would make to DPVA if he were to lead it would be “empowering” the organization’s central committee to deliberate the organization’s decisions and to move towards the DPVA chair being a full-time position.

Stanfield called Swecker’s decade in the role a “bridge” towards this reform. While the position is elected every four years, the chair hasn’t been seen as someone who is dedicating a 40-hour workweek to it the way that Swecker has appeared to have done. Under her leadership, paid staff of the party has grown.

As she is stepping down, Stanfield and his opponents have the chance to helm DPVA through the end of this year before the election for the next four-year term happens in 2026.

Pruckowski shares the goal of more robust communication with central committee members. Pruckowski has been involved with DPVA for over a decade. While Northern Virginia has been reliably Democratic for decades, Republicans have been working to gain ground in the area — making Democrats need to work harder to keep their turf.

His years of experience within DPVA and as a regional chair within it is what makes him best suited to take the helm this year, Pruckowski said. He said the party could work towards shifting the overall chair of the party to a full-time position when the elections for its next full four-year term occur next year.

Bagby, on the other hand, would add DPVA chair work to his resume of responsibilities in various leadership roles. He said he does not plan to step down from his position as a state senator or from the committees he serves on and the one that he chairs, but he would step back from leading the Black caucus. With 32 members, the caucus is ripe with others who could step into the role as its face and primary voice.

Bagby cites his caucus leadership role as a key experience that prepares him to lead DPVA if elected. Having served in the House of Delegates and now in the Senate too, Bagby said he’s had a track record of working with others and helping to support fellow Democrats around the state.

Some of the Democratic leaders he’s built relationships with are backing him now, like U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (who was DPVA chair while serving as governor), current Democratic leadership in the Virginia House of Delegates and Senate, as well as gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger. He’s not just relying on the big names to secure a win, though.

“I appreciate the endorsements I’ve had, but the work is really going to be from those rank and file members of the committee,” Bagby said. “I’m excited to continue to do what I think I’ve done well, and that is keep people in the room and keep folks coordinated … and keeping the overall goal in mind — getting Democrats elected.”

‘Empowering’ more party members

Having served other roles in DPVA already, Bagby’s opponents have some ideas for reform and each spoke with The Mercury about how they could “empower” other party members.

Stanfield, who has served on the central committee at various points over the years, said he felt those committee members were not able to weigh in on party-wide decisions as much as others.

“It’s this sort of idea of actually empowering members of the central committee to have a say, which means more regular voting on a larger range of issues,” Stanfield said.

Pruckowski noted how DPVA’s overall apparatus includes hundreds of people who volunteer their time around the state that he feels are “under-utilized and under-listened to.”

While there are roughly 300 people involved in DPVA representing different coalitions of the group around the state, while the steering committee is what “governs all party matters,” according to DPVA’s website. That committee is composed of the chair, vice-chair, secretary, treasurer, Democratic National Committee members and chairs that represent Virginia’s congressional districts.

Fielding more input is something that Pruckowski said he’s pushed for several years. He also currently serves on the party’s steering committee as its 10th Congressional District Chair.

In his time being involved with DPVA, Stanfield described feeling like many decisions were made by the steering committee for others to “rubber stamp.”

“I mean, it’s sort of understood procedurally ‘you’re just going to approve this,’” he explained.

Meanwhile, Pruckowski said that he’d like DPVA’s leadership to field input from the regional members, particularly when it comes to strategizing elections.

“I think that the folks who know best about what we need to do to win in an area are the volunteer leaders in that area,” he said.

Stanfield questions a potential Bagby conflict of interest, liability for the party

As the next DPVA chair will be a face and voice for the Democratic Party in the state, Stanfield cautions how a potential conflict of interest might be something Republicans could target Bagby for.

He pointed to reporting from independent journalist Christa Motley. Her exploration into how recovery homes are funded revealed potential conflicts of interest between Bagby and the organization that receives state funding for recovery houses.

Motley’s reporting detailed how state funding to the Virginia Association of Recovery Residences drastically increased in recent years after Bagby’s legislative advocacy. Emails she obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show VARR officials praising Bagby numerous times and calling him a “champion.”

Motley also reported that a limited liability company had been formed between Bagby, VARR leaders and others that later leased office space in Richmond and how a for-profit recovery house owned by Bagby’s brother was also a recipient of funding allocated from VARR.

When Motley asked Bagby about potential for conflicts of interest, he described himself as a sideline advocate for VARR.

But Stanfield felt it was worth further exploration and something Bagby should elaborate on if he’s to become DPVA chair. In a call with The Mercury, Stanfield said he wanted to give Bagby “a chance to tell us what’s going on here — it’s kind of a liability right?”

But Bagby disagrees and said in a phone interview “All I have done was give money to the recovery community.”

He did not want to speak on record further about the matter.

How DPVA could boost rural Democrats

Historically, Democrats have not held much elected ground in the rural parts of Southwest and Southside Virginia. Republicans and conservative-leaning voters tend to dominate these areas. So, financial investments in rural Democrats could be argued as a waste of resources on unwinnable seats but also as an investment in the party’s future bases.

A potential case for investment was made in 2023 when Lily Franklin narrowly lost to Del. Chris Obenshain in the 41st House of Delegates district by 183 votes.

Their contest saw more than $1.5 million in spending and the two are slated for a rematch this year. DPVA was Franklin’s top donor.

This year it could again be a seat that DPVA considers boosting financially and one that Stanfield, Bagby or Pruckowski might want to stump in.

“If there’s a candidate out in Southwest Virginia in Bath County or Lee County, that’s helping the top of the ticket as well,” Bagby said. “So us investing in them is also investing in the top of the ticket.”

While the House Democratic Caucus will be expected to boost candidates this year, their focus is typically on the battleground districts — usually in Hampton Roads, the Richmond area and Northern Virginia. Perhaps rural contests are where DPVA could also lend ground support or financial boons.

“I think that thing we’ve struggled with as a party is, you know, listening to all the activists on the ground all across the state,” Pruckowski said.

It’s why he also hopes DPVA can focus some of its candidate training resources to rural campaigns as well.

Stanfield also sees ways DPVA can help foster some rural-focused fundraising that doesn’t necessarily have to come totally out of DPVA’s coffers.

For instance, he noted how Virginia draws national attention with its House and governor elections the year following a presidential election. This is a chance, he said, to set up a fund and draw on that attention.

“I feel confident people like (U.S. Rep Bernie Sanders, D-Vermont) and (U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York) and others would share this thing out,” he said.

During the 2018 congressional midterm elections, he worked for 6th Congressional District candidate Jennifer Lewis. Though the seat ultimately went to Republican U.S. Rep. Ben Cline, the campaign secured the endorsement of outgoing Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte’s son, and sparked a grassroots campaign to raise funds.

With a slim 51-49 lead in Virginia’s House of Delegates, Democrats will try to widen that margin this year, as all 100 seats will be up for election. A potential rebuke to President Donald Trump and his influence over the Republican Party could inspire heightened Democratic turnout in the June primaries or November election this year, but party organizers and candidates alike will still need to put in the groundwork to keep voters engaged.

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News from the South - Virginia News Feed

As measles cases spread nationwide, here's who needs to get vaccinated | NBC4 Washington

Published

13 hours ago

March 10, 2025

Staff Editor

www.youtube.com – NBC4 Washington – 2025-03-10 20:45:30

SUMMARY: As measles cases rise nationwide, it’s essential to know who needs vaccination. The MMR vaccine, given in two doses—first at 12-15 months and again at 4-6 years—offers the best protection. Adults born before 1957 generally have natural immunity due to past exposure, while those vaccinated before 1968 may require revaccination due to the use of a less effective killed vaccine. High-risk groups, including healthcare workers and international travelers, may need additional doses. With current nationwide vaccination rates declining, maintaining immunity is crucial. The CDC reports two doses of the MMR vaccine are 97% effective for lifelong protection.

With Measles cases on the rise nationwide, infectious disease experts say some older adults should get vaccinated against it. News4’s Erika Gonzalez reports.
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