"Buying out" in relation to employees.

Yes, please... I gave an arrowhead to Ron at Lagunitas as I was vying for the brand. Does that count...?

 

In my view this is excellent advice.

One of the things we can take to the bank is that when we hear about several mergers across a variety of different circumstances there will be many more people complaining about/spreading the word about what they feel they lost in their paprticular company's merger than there will people bragging about/spreading the word about how they are now better off than they were before their particular company's merger.

 

You don't have to have worked for a corporation since it happens in other situations as well.

Here's a nice example/description of the "game."

https://heroictechwriting.com/2012/03/31/bring-me-a-rock/

But notice that it is up to you personally to decide whether your particular example fits with either character in the narrative.

I particularly like the author's recommendation about how to deal with such a "game." The take away seems to be that it takes two to make the game happen and you become the "victim" (or creator) of the game by not taking the time to listen to and really understand what the other person (or the client in this description) is asking for.

 

I know the game, but I was a bad player. Starting with an arrowhead for an old hippie seemed to work just fine. "Heroic Technical Writing" is a classic title!

 

Yeah that title is at least a part of the reason I linked to that particular site.

(That and the fact that for some years a good portion of my earned income came from consulting work before we were well enough off for me to be doing some things for nominal amounts or even pro bono. Indeed, my general practice for years has been to be certain I knew enough about the clients' requirements before even starting a "working model" concept to test with them and be sure that the clients themselves understood what they really were asking for/wanted/needed.)

 

With a lot of things I think the outcome of buyouts depends on the value the parent corporation sees in the acquired company. And the state the acquired company is in.

In Goose Island I think that AB Inbev saw a lot of value in the big experimental/extreme beers. That's why they are allowed to expand and explore the Sophie/Matilda series and BCBS. These beers give AB Inbev access to a market they have no access to otherwise. It benefits them to treat Goose Island very well to try to keep on top of that market. Also it's good PR to show that the acquisitions can go well. Goose Island probably had lower wages than the standard AB Inbev so they won out there too.

But other breweries are purchased because they have a large market in reasonably average styles of beer. Do they fare as well as Goose Island when they normally appeal to a greater mass market? You may gain more by streamlining costs here and making the same product more appealing.

But regardless... I think there will be an impact to the employees because there will be redundant positions. Do the purchased breweries retain their Sales Reps throughout the country? I'd think the majority of the sales would be pushed by the distributor because they're already selling ALL of the corporations products. Also if breweries had their own financial positions they may be streamlined and reduced.

Initially more manufacturing jobs may be there but with the capital involved more technology and automation is available which can make a very big impact on the manpower needed to run production.

For an individual brewery it can be give and take. But throughout the industry as a whole it decreases the amount of jobs available because smaller breweries cannot compete as well with the efficient craft brewers that have the resources of the corporations. If a brewery cannot sell their beer because they cannot get tap space when all the taps are taken up by Goose Island, Lagunitas, or any number of big beer owned breweries then they just won't be able to make the money to grow.

This is what happened throughout the 1900's and it's why we had gotten to the point we were at in the 1980's. In 1930's there were close to 800 breweries in the US. By 1980 there were only around 100.

The US DoJ cares not one whit about anti-trust monopolies... They approved the AB Inbev - Miller acquisition. It was only the Chinese government that blocked it forcing Miller to sell all of their domestic brands to MillerCoors for approval. The US DoJ told AB Inbev they weren't supposed to continue buying up craft breweries... But then they bought Karbach and there was not a peep from the DoJ.

 

That's because that purchase fell within the guidelines for doing business in the US that were imposed by the DoJ before they gave permission to ABInBev for the merger of two foreign companies to proceed.

 

That's not what the US DoJ claimed:

Of course, MolsonCoors (which had the right of first refusal for the other part of MC) and ABInBev anticipated such a requirement and announced such a deal months earlier, in November 2015:

Molson Coors to Acquire Full Ownership of MillerCoors Joint Venture and Global Miller Brand Portfolio for $12 Billion

China's objection to the merger was SABMiller's share of the brewer of the #1 beer in China, Snow

No, only that such purchases must be reviewed by the DoJ:

 

So are you saying that you have not worked for AB since they've acquired craft breweries?

I've been friends with a handful of Goose people that have said that things improved across the board. They said that safety procedures and more corporate structure were big for them. (Let's face it, the beer industry can be a little laid back). I've met people from Elysian and Breck as well. They said that everything smoothed out after AB decided to not drug test them

 

That says more about what small craft brewers provided their employees compared to the big breweries.

Anheuser Busch may have provided better raises and employee support than Inbev did.

But AB-Inbev had more resources than Goose Island.

So life would change for the better at Goose Island but it would change for the worse at the original AB breweries...

 

I mean I guess it COULD but whenever people talk about buyouts they tend to reference the craft breweries which are much, much smaller operations with "limited" infrastructure. AB has a vast network across the country connecting their core breweries.

 

Yes. But the person you quoted stated that they worked for ANHEUSER-BUSCH when it was purchase by Inbev. Their experience was of a hugely profitable company with a massive infrastructure being bought out by another massive company adding restrictions.

The people you talk to have the experiences of small independent companies that struggle to make a profit with relatively nonexistent infrastructure.

So the person you quoted has a different experience than the people you talk to.

Their experience still wouldn't have improved when AB-Inbev started buying Goose Island/Elysian because things weren't improving from what they already existed.

AB-Inbev was just bringing Goose Island/Elysian up to the level of existing AB-Inbev employees, not improving the experience of their current employees.

 

Yes I have worked for AB since the craft acquisitions but I have not met any of the craft employees, so I have zero personal knowledge of their experience.