The Plot to Destroy America's Beer

It was an interesting article, but I don't really understand what the point of all that was. AB-InBev is a giant international monster company. Im pretty sure everyone already knew that. That's why this website is made up of people that don't buy any of their products. I am having troubling figuring out what the controversy is.

 

pretty much everbody on here will buy BCBS if they have access to it

 

Except for the dozens of threads searching out every bottle of BCBS people can find.

Note: I'm actually fairly happy with the GI buyout so far, since it doesn't seem to have affected the Chicago-brewed stuff and we've gotten lots of nice things.

 

My take is that the article paints AB under the Busch family as an enormous, but still sentimental corporation. This ruthless Brazillian bean counter comes in and focuses only on dollar signs.

It's a big stretch imho. Cost cutting flavor killing compromises were going on long before Inbev got their hands on the company. Pre-takeover AB had the same bottom-line focus the merged company has.

 

As a businessperson who drinks beer, my comment would be that it is the lunacy bred by the short term focus of quarterly results that comes with public companies! I don't think he's running a great business. He's a running a business to get great short-term results...some of these moves are wise, but some of them are incredibly stupid long-term IMO.

 

That gives a good overview of ABInbev's way of conducting business. How long can they continue to cut costs and raise prices before there is serious consumer backlash? The Winking Lizard pubs in Ohio announced this week they're pulling Bud Light taps due to price increases, maybe that's where it begins?

 

Cutting costs by over One Billion Dollars in a year says to me Mr Brito and his team are even more about efficiency than the Busch family was.

 

The guy mentioned lost all credibility with me after his professed love for becks.

 

Could be. Could also be that the dramatic jump in the size of the company allowed ABI to find process improvements that just weren't available to AB.

Take it FWIW. I'm no PhD economist but I do have internet access.

 

I did overlook the Goose Island buyout. At the end of the day, InBev, MillerCoors, Goose Island and all the other craft breweries are for-profit companies. They all want the maximum market share they can get. It basically comes down to their different buisness models. We buy the craft beer because we feel it is a far supperior product and are happy to pay more for the quality. The other side is willing to go for the inferior mass produced cheap buzz. The big guys got that big because the vast majority of the world is in column B.

 

In the end, the old Anheuser-Busch was a 500 pound gorilla, and the resulting ABInbev is a 900 pound gorilla. It's not a different animal, just a bigger animal.

 

I believe most of the responses missed an important point. Beck's sales are down 14% in food stores ostensibly because of the change in the beer. Now think New Coke vs. Classic Coke. People do not like their favorite products to be changed, especially for the worse. So if Beck drinkers are turning away from Beck's perhaps they are turning to craft beer rather than back to other adjunct lagers. And the title of the post should be "the plot to destroy Beck's beer" since in America, there are a vast number of other choices and although InBev owns a major market share, nobody is forcing you to buy their products.

 

That’s a non-denial denial.

 

As long as Brito keeps finding ways to cut costs then they can somewhat balance their decline in sales. Ha

 

None of this is too surprising. I'm not very worried; craft beer has always occupied a niche market that isn't going away with the expansion of Ab InBev. I mean, their expansion isn't really cutting into craft profits, because that demographic is pretty much unaffected by it. As long as we're still here, craft breweries will still exist.

 

So say we all.

 

What was this thread about? Oh yeah the plot to destroy beer.

With Thanksgiving coming up it oughta be said and noted, that despite this supposed gorrilla of a company, most Americans have easy access to the finest variety of fantastic beer likely ever seen in the history of the world.

Despite the plot to destroy beer all the breweries making really good beer are doing really well. Brewery expansion is well under way at facilities across the country.

And don't minimize the fact that only a brewery as big as Budweiser is capable of doing many things smaller ones cannot. Buying and dedicating an entire facility to a barrel aging project is one of them.

I said if Bud ever did something really really good I would say thank you. Here it is.

Thank you for the cases of Bourbon County Stout that I and some of those I know now have in our cellars.

 

I'm not worried either. Many craft breweries would not sell out to a company like this. New Glarus is one of them.

 

it freaked me out the first time I saw "Honker's Ale - brewed in Baldwinsville, NY"