Did Prohibition Help Big Beer?

I am sure it had to help as the small guys had found other things to do and never restarted. I cannot imagine any company thinking that strategically that they would hurt their business for that long with no promise of a windfall later. I think modern transportation and distribution systems hurt them much more in the long run.

 

I don't think they planned it that way, but it definitely helped them. The larger, established breweries were able to stay open by making other products like soda, .5% beer and other crap while moving stuff out the back. The smaller spots had no other options and folded. I think at the time of Prohibition, breweries were at the same number nationally as they are now. Crazy to think about.

 

When prohibition hit the big breweries of today didn't have anything close to the market share that they now have. There were also numerous big breweries as compared to the 3 or 4 today that make up the majority of the market. Follow JessKidden for some awesome history/statistics on this matter.

 

Nope. Not at all. According to this site, there were 756 breweries up and running again by 1934. It was a steady string of buyouts, closures, and consolidation after that which brought us to the "big 3" we have now.

Year - Breweries:
1934 - 756 breweries in operation
1950 - 407 breweries in operation
1949-1958 - 185 breweries close down or sell out
1961 - 230 breweries in operation. Only 140 are independently run.
1983 - 51 brewing concerns are operating a total of 80 breweries. This is the low water mark for breweries in the 20th century. The top six breweries (Anheuser-Busch, Miller, Heileman, Stroh, Coors, and Pabst) control 92% of U. S. beer production.

http://www.beerhistory.com/library/holdings/chronology.shtml

 

It wasn't some conspiracy but it definitely helped in the formation of the big three. Though combining to become mega corporations was also the style of the time.

 

I would suggest that the interstate highway system was another significant issue since interstates effectively put "local" and/or "regional" out of business, pretty much regardless of the industry. "Hey, I recognize those Golden Arches/Bob's Big Boy from back home!" "Hey, I know this AB product from back home!" (And yeah: Most people think that way. The phenomenon -- along with a cost-friendly price point -- is why nearly every Cracker Barrel restaurant parking lot is usually jam-packed.) I think some of the dates @maltmaster420 mentions track the development of the interstate system.

 

Sure, the number of breweries decreased, but the average barrelage of the existing breweries increased (from 2.3k to 47k bbl/yr in 1914) as did total beer production - black doted line in the graph below - which grew faster than the population.


The number of US breweries really says very little about the overall industry, whether it was in the 1870s when the total briefly topped the 4 thousand mark but the average barrelage was 2,300 bbl., or today when the figure is again approaching 4,000 but two brewing companies alone account for nearly 90% of the total US production.

The same pre-Pro "Big 3" national brewers - AB, Schlitz and Pabst - held that position initially in the first decade after Repeal. By the late 30s, they had about 9% of the US market. Of the Top 10 US breweries during the '30s, only AB still exists as an actual brewing company.

Pabst as an independent company ended in the '80s when they were bought and eventually combined with the other S&P breweries (Falstaff, General, Pearl) and stopped brewing all together in 2002 when they closed the last of the breweries in San Antonio (ex-Pearl) and Allentown, PA (a brewery they ran only briefly after buying it during the Stroh fire sale of 1999).

 

Labatts Prohibition series definately didn't help things in the craft beer market. Blech

 

It wasn't a conspiracy but I think it undoubtedly helped them.

They also managed to hook people who don't like the taste of beer by giving them Adjunct Lagers, and even worse... Light beers. All of those are basically reduced flavor beers and it isn't surprising that the general public likes these just as it isn't surprising that the general public likes near-flavorless cheese like Velveeta or American. Or Wonder Bread. Or... on and on.

 

I think mass advertising help the big guys much more than prohibition. Prohibition definitely helped the big guys, but they didn't truly dominate the market like they do today for quite a while after prohibitin ended.

 

That happened way before prohibition. And they didn't "hook" anyone. They made what people wanted.