Beer Wars or Hard Times?

[MI-Cans]

Found this in the local Meijer weekly ad. Bud & Bud Light @ 14.5 cents per can! Coors & Coors Light @ 56.2 cents per can!

Earlier this year, Labatt was offering $5 and $7 rebates on 24 packs of cans. I stocked up. At the same time, I saw one store charging as much as $24.99 per case of 24 cans back then.

These companies all own craft brands they've been snapping up over the years. Is it a sign that the craft beer craze is putting a serious dent into the national brand sales?

Click to enlarge.

(MI-Cans)

[jimw630]

My guess is a promotion for the grocers with the Memorial Day Holiday approaching

[menke]

My sense is that the craft brands that have been co-opted by the big boys are more or less fooling the public successfully. No way to know if the beer would have evolved differently without corporate overlords looking over their shoulders, though.

I did a little dance the other day when I read Flying Dog is leaving Maryland. Best wishes to FX Matt, I hope they do well with it. Flying Dog was one of those carpetbagger companies trying to dodge western water shortages and be faux-local in a new, wealthy area. They gobbled up a local startup from the early nineties that was once fabulous but also ambitious and mentally ill. The plant itself was just snakebit, though, and hopefully Thomas' English Muffins across the road will just buy it and bulldoze everything but the silos.

Other brands bought by the big boys have tanked- Rolling Rock is a prime example.

I think the bloodier fight is the international corporations beating each other up. People will always drink cheap swill and they don't seem to care where it comes from. Ron from Victory once told me that the US beer market is actually about a quarter the size of what they say it is, when you consider that most of it is essentially alcoholic soda water. Fair point. And only an international conglomerate would care what happens in the alcoholic soda water category.

[menke]

Quite a laundry list of shortcomings when you read down further!

https://thedailyrecord.com/2023/05/23/d ... perts-say/

[Scott]

Bud Light's sales are down significantly for well documented reasons I don't need to go into here (nor does anybody else - tread lightly folks). They may have a lot of beer on hand that is reaching its expiration date. Better from their perspective to sell it cheap rather than dump it completely. Coors Light may be discounting their beer in an effort to syphon off market share from people who are no longer purchasing Bud products.

[Sea Monkey]

Bud Light's sales are down significantly for well documented reasons I don't need to go into here (nor does anybody else - tread lightly folks). They may have a lot of beer on hand that is reaching its expiration date. Better from their perspective to sell it cheap rather than dump it completely. Coors Light may be discounting their beer in an effort to syphon off market share from people who are no longer purchasing Bud products.

You are correct. Budweiser losses because of the "transgender" can are over a BILLION. My boss was on the BOD of Better Brands (Myrtle Beach Bud Distributor) until it sold in December. He is still close to the people still there. All distributorships order their beer MONTHS in advance. The sales of Bud Light have fallen off terribly but the deliveries keep pouring in. 3/4 of the Myrtle Beach distributorship is overloaded with Bud Light and won't be sold before it goes out of date. The people that bought the MB distributorship have already offered to sell it back for over 200 million LESS than they paid for it just 6 months ago! What does that tell you!

[Summitcan]

Redneck women ( and there’s millions of them ) probably drink a couple 12 packs of bud light a week .. Not good marketing strategy

[josh]

At three and a half bucks a case I'd buy it all. I have no issue with the tranny on the canny...

[menke]

The funny part is they're whining that the only businesses really being hurt are the "mom and pop" local distributors. Let's back up a step...

Those distributors have been riding Superbeer's cape for decades, making stupid profits at the expense of all the competition and all the American drinkers. They've stepped on EVERYONE in the business the entire time, so I imagine it doesn't feel fair to them for the parent megacorp to have upset their own market for once. Sorry not sorry.

And there are no mom and pop distributors. They're all sleazy profit-driven cretins who deserve no sympathy. They've been the most profitable businesses around, at least until the banana republic Eurotrash took over, and are now being welcomed back into the pack. Drink your values, whatever they may be, by all means! They simply stand for nothing at this point, to anyone but their own shareholders.

[kb]

Always love a good Menke read on threads !!


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[HDbeerman]

The funny part is they're whining that the only businesses really being hurt are the "mom and pop" local distributors. Let's back up a step...

Those distributors have been riding Superbeer's cape for decades, making stupid profits at the expense of all the competition and all the American drinkers. They've stepped on EVERYONE in the business the entire time, so I imagine it doesn't feel fair to them for the parent megacorp to have upset their own market for once. Sorry not sorry.

And there are no mom and pop distributors. They're all sleazy profit-driven cretins who deserve no sympathy. They've been the most profitable businesses around, at least until the banana republic Eurotrash took over, and are now being welcomed back into the pack. Drink your values[/color], whatever they may be, by all means! They simply stand for nothing at this point, to anyone but their own shareholders.

"Drink your values".

I love it!

[menke]

Best comment I've seen so far, from a news thread today:

Bud Light's pronouns are was/were