Just days after the state shutdown in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Illinois farmer and brewer Matt Riggs faced a sober reckoning.
“We were a draft-only brewery, so I had $100,000 worth of beer packaged in kegs and ready to go, and with the bars and restaurants, closed, I had zero market,” said Riggs, owner of Riggs Beer Co. in Urbana.
But as a fifth generation grain farmer whose family has witnessed the devastation wrought by droughts and floods dating back to the 19th century, the disaster that arrived in March 2020 prompted Riggs to pivot, not panic.
