Monopolized U.S. Beer Market Threatens Diversity, Local Control

Very interesting and in-depth article. As a guy who is just graduating with a marketing degree and looking to work for a wholesaler/distributor and eventually a brewery, it opens my eyes to a few things going on in the industry. It is interesting how important the three-tier system is to our beer industry, but how seemingly corrupt it still is. Though regulated, the beer industry is still being monopolized and the consumer is still hurting, as they were pre-prohibition. I wish the government was able to do more to stop these acquisitions from ABI and MC, but I think the real problem lies in the lobbyists who basically fund a lot of the politicians campaigns. It'll be interesting to see what happens in the future.

 

Why is it that every article about beer contains a different percentage of market control by BMC? I've seen everywhere from 75% - this one @ 90%. What gives?

 

That's how monopolies work?

 

The difference is that one figure is their total US beer market share, which is now around 75% for AB (47%) and MC (28.4%) (which also includes the imports they bring in, most of which are brewed/owned by their 3 parent co's - ABInBev, SABMiller and MolsonCoors).

The 90% refers to the percentage of US beer production those two brew in the US.

The 14% of the US market that is now imported brands being the major difference between the two figures.

 

Monopoly? I want the car.

 

Ahhh. Thanx.

 

What it still boils down to is breweries being able to get their beer on trucks. With the growing share craft beer has hopefully this will inspire more distributers to build there business by distributing a large portfolio of craft beer rather then relying on the bulk of their business coming from BMC because then its too easy to leverage the distributor in to carrying one of their new lines and dropping a craft

 

Craft breweries are still having difficulty getting their beer distributed?

You sure this article isn't from 2004?

 

That's another chilling look at the plans of ABI. Bully your distributors, squeeze out those whose goals don't perfectly align with ABI, manipulate legislation to gain greater control of the market. These are reasons many of us fear ABInbev and MillerCoors.

 

You should go for the thimble. You can drink more beer out of it.

 

Scary stuff.

 

Of the 48 brewing companies in the US in 1980 (debatable whether one would call all of them "major"- but the non-microbrewing-era ones), a dozen others besides AB and MC still exist:

1. Anchor
2. City (successor to Heileman, also runs former Latrobe plant)
3. Cold Spring
4. Matt (at the time the West End Brewing Co.)
5. Minhas (formerly Huber)
6. Genesee
7. Schell
8. Spoetzl
9. Stevens Point
10. Straub
11. The Lion
12. Yuengling

​

 

Kudos for posting this Jason. I hope that all BA's come check this thread out.

 

I think this shows the folly in creating legislation to solve commercial problems. There is always a work around, but the legislation just gives an advantage to those closest to the beaurocrats. The three tier system does not work and is unneccessary legislative garbage. If it benefited smaller breweries to have someone truck/ship their beer, let them choose to do so.

 

Yeah, I don't get this. If it were true, wouldn't we see a shrinking number of craft breweries? Instead, we see just the opposite: a growing number of craft brewers and distribution across the US. Every time I go to Total Wine, they have new beers from breweries across the country.

Maybe this article is focusing only on breweries that brew only Adjunct Lagers, like Yuengling, Coors, Bud, etc?

Another misused word. If it's a monopoly, that means there's only one company making the product. Mono = one.

 

ah but poly = many. where is your god now?

jim koch credited the three-tier system as a major reason sam adams was able to survive and thrive. i'm sure jesskidden has the exact quote...

 

This is why we have antitrust laws. Now if only they were enforced.

 

for clarification... only 10 of those are still American owned, most have changed hands numerous times & the rest are contract brewers at best, where the beers that actually bear the name are terrible facsimiles of what they were & only 2 or 3 are actually independently owned.

 

This is not why we have anti-trust laws. Concerted action type of price fixing is. They are enforced, but this scenario does not fall under said legislation.

Anti trust lawsuits don't occur when the big boys are losing ground by double digits annually to the smaller competitors (one could easily argue that craft and BMC aren't even competitors). The invisible hand is handling this alleged problem better than the government could.