Heineken is to purchase 50% of the California craft brewery, Lagunitas, or as they put it, “Heineken and Lagunitas Brewing Company partner to take craft beer global.” In the same vein, Anheuser-Busch InBev has announced they will purchase the innovative Asheville, NC brewery, Wicked Weed.
The reactions to these “big beer” takeovers of craft beer are surprisingly different. Craft brewery, Jester King, has close ties to Wicked Weed. The Austin, Texas brewer reacted by stating they will no longer sell Wicked Weed products. Their justification, as noted in their blog entry about the AB InBev purchase, “because a portion of the money made off of selling it is used to oppose the interests of craft brewers.” Jester King is not alone in condemning the deal. Other breweries have pulled out of the upcoming Wicked Weed festival and the North Carolina Brewer’s Guild has stripped the brewery of its voting rights. Marc Wisdom gives a great summary of the consequences of the Wicked Weed sale in his Reaction to Wicked Weed Sale to Anheuser-Busch. The negativity from the Lagunitas/Heineken transaction seems to be far less. As Bill Swindell notes in Reactions to Lagunitas-Heineken deal, that sale has been promoted and accepted for the most part as a means of promoting craft beer.
Personally, I am torn. On the one hand, I enjoy many of the beers from both Lagunitas and Wicked Weed. I hope that the deal makes their beverages more readily available in my neighborhood — Beers like the delicious sour Black Angel, from Wicked Weed’s sour-centric brewery, Funkatorium.
The future of craft beer?
But will the quality remain? I am leery of corporations. During my career, I have survived 3 corporate takeovers.
In each takeover, I experienced a similar pattern. First, there was a promise to leave things as they were before. “Nothing will change”, they said. “We purchased the company because of its quality. Why would we disrupt that?”
But slowly things did change. Then one day, the memo we feared finally came. “Thank you for your sacrifice of [name the benefit] so that we can be more competitive.” Moral soon soured leading to poorer quality products. That is my fear from these beer mergers/takeovers.
I doubt that Big Beer can really stop the craft beer movement. For every successful brewery “selling out” to the big boys, 10 new breweries replace them. And those working at those “sellout” breweries will eventually get the dreaded memo and their beer will sour, and not in a good way.
The biggest problem with inBev acquiring all these craft beers is that they use their financial cloud and superior distribution to crowd out competition.
Case in point: there used to be a bar out in center field at National’s Park that had an interesting variety of craft beers. One time you might get Allagash White, anotehr time you would get Ommegang or Stillwater.
It’s now the Bud Bar. Sure they still have “craft beers”, but only ones owned by inBev. There’s some decent stuff, I like Goose Island IPA and some Devil’s Backbone brews. But I know I’ll never get anotehr Allagash there. And they’ll always have that crappy Blue Point Toasted Lager instead.
Nats Park still has some DC Brew stands with a rotating variety of DC locals. But the amount of choices has decreased significantly with inBev taking over the center field bar. I’m sure the Nationals made a good bit of money one it.
The only way to fight the creeping inBevization as a customer is to patronize their products as little as possible. When I’m shopping for a 6 pack, I will avoid them. Will I be a fanatic about it? No. I’ll still stop at Devils’ Backbone Outpost off Route 81 on my way down to a Virginia Tech game and fill a growler for my tailgate. If I’m in an airport bar and my only choices are crap or Goose Island IPA, I’ll have the Goose. But I will certainly not go out of my way to feed the inBev coffers.
Loading...
Well said! And I totally agree. Plus, I love the word, inBevization. I hope you don’t mind if I borrow it.
The biggest problem with inBev acquiring all these craft beers is that they use their financial cloud and superior distribution to crowd out competition.
Case in point: there used to be a bar out in center field at National’s Park that had an interesting variety of craft beers. One time you might get Allagash White, anotehr time you would get Ommegang or Stillwater.
It’s now the Bud Bar. Sure they still have “craft beers”, but only ones owned by inBev. There’s some decent stuff, I like Goose Island IPA and some Devil’s Backbone brews. But I know I’ll never get anotehr Allagash there. And they’ll always have that crappy Blue Point Toasted Lager instead.
Nats Park still has some DC Brew stands with a rotating variety of DC locals. But the amount of choices has decreased significantly with inBev taking over the center field bar. I’m sure the Nationals made a good bit of money one it.
The only way to fight the creeping inBevization as a customer is to patronize their products as little as possible. When I’m shopping for a 6 pack, I will avoid them. Will I be a fanatic about it? No. I’ll still stop at Devils’ Backbone Outpost off Route 81 on my way down to a Virginia Tech game and fill a growler for my tailgate. If I’m in an airport bar and my only choices are crap or Goose Island IPA, I’ll have the Goose. But I will certainly not go out of my way to feed the inBev coffers.
Well said! And I totally agree. Plus, I love the word, inBevization. I hope you don’t mind if I borrow it.
Sure!