HARRISBURG, Pa. — Bald Birds Brewing Company has paid $582,782 in back wages to 124 workers after state investigators found it paid staff late for several months and most recently left many without a paycheck for five weeks, the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry said.
The brewer also paid $64,227.87 in liquidated damages to 108 of those workers, L&I said in a Sept. 10 release, bringing the total to $647,009.87. The company closed both of its Montgomery County taprooms this summer and is shifting toward contract manufacturing.
The case began with ongoing complaints about late paychecks, the department said. An audit found Wage Payment and Collection Law violations at the Audubon, King of Prussia and Jersey Shore locations.
“When employers fail to pay workers on time, there are consequences,” L&I Secretary Nancy A. Walker said in the release.
The release says the money was paid under an agreement with the department but does not say whether Bald Birds admitted wrongdoing or paid fines; the agreement was not posted with it.
Section 10 of the Wage Payment and Collection Law covers wages unpaid 30 days past a regular payday. Unless the pay is in good-faith dispute, those workers can claim 25 percent of the wages due or $500, whichever is greater.
Twenty-five percent of the back wages would be about $145,700. The $64,227.87 paid works out to about 11 percent, or roughly $595 per recipient. The release does not say how the damages were calculated or why 16 of the 124 workers got none.
Bald Birds closed its King of Prussia brewery and taproom at 250 King Manor Dr. on July 31, less than a year after taking over the former Workhorse Brewing space, MONTCO Today reported.
“The facility just wasn’t the right fit for our manufacturing model,” owner Joey Feerrar told Breweries in Pennsylvania, according to MONTCO Today.
The Audubon taproom at 970 Rittenhouse Rd., which that report said would stay open, served its last customers Aug. 30, nearly eight years after it opened, Breweries in PA reported. Its farewell message, published by that site, thanked customers who “showed up for us through some genuinely hard stretches.”
MONTCO Today reported that the Jersey Shore complex in Lycoming County, a production brewery and taproom, would keep running as a key piece of B3 Beverage Company.
That taproom is still booking events. A post this week on its Instagram account, baldbirds_js, listed trivia night, music bingo on Sept. 10 and live music on Sept. 13.
According to Brewbound, Bald Birds launched that contract brewing venture with Yards Brewing and Two Roads Brewing; B3 has since acquired Yards, and Two Roads and Heavy Seas have left.
In February, the Audubon landlord, MSM 970 Rittenhouse Rd., LLC, filed a confession-of-judgment complaint in Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas seeking $1,515,623.33 in unpaid rent and lease obligations, Breweries in PA reported.
On Feb. 2, Parkview Advance LLC sued Bald Birds, B3 Beer Company, Yards Brewing and Joseph Feerrar in state Supreme Court in Monroe County, N.Y. Trellis, a court-records site, lists it as a commercial division factoring case.
As of Friday morning, neither the company’s website nor its latest Instagram posts mentioned the wage settlement.
Bald Birds beer is still sold in the Lehigh Valley. Stockertown Beverage, a distributor in Stockertown, Northampton County, lists the brewer’s IPAs, porter and sour as available in Lehigh, Northampton, Monroe and Carbon counties, among others.
L&I says it completed more than 5,800 labor law complaints in 2025, recovered more than $5.65 million in unpaid wages and collected more than $2.1 million in fines.
Workers who believe they were paid late or shorted can file a complaint with the department’s Bureau of Labor Law Compliance online, by email at RA-LI-SLMR-LLC@pa.gov, by fax at 717-787-0517 or by mail.