Historian. Author. Ranter. Idea Junkie.
This a blog. Sort of. I rarely use it anymore.
One-stop shopping for all things A-B/InBev. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has created a web page to "hold" its InBev/A-B coverage from the past few months. The page also contains links to a number of cool audio/visual features about the deal and the companies involved.
I know I'm the only person who's choked up about this. What can I say? I'm a historian. As I noted elsewhere, I take the long view of the big picture. And as I noted a few days ago, some of you might actually miss A-B. Anyway ....
Next-day addition to original post: Just realized how callous the above sounds. Obviously I'm not the only person who cares about this. Many people do. Thousands of people. Especially the ones who already have or are about to lose their jobs because of the merger. My apologies.
Today the Justice Department approved InBev's purchase of Anheuser-Busch, subject to InBev unloading Labatt's USA. Read more here. The lovely and always-alert Harry Schuhmacher at Beer Business Daily, the deal itself may close sometime next week.
Why does my brain keep singing "Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go?" God only knows, because that particular song (one of my favorites) has NOTHING to do with this deal. But I am feeling just a wee bit sniffly about this moment. Sigh. Probably emotional hang-over from the election.
And yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the rest of you don't give a shit. To which I say: SOMEONE has to care. Better me than some random whoever, right?
In the current issue of Beer Advocate magazine (volume II, issue X) a reader chides the magazine's publishers/editors for running ads from the "big" brewers.
". . . I don't think BA should be a forum for the advertisers at BudMillerCoors. In the same way, I don't want to see a Wal-Mart ad in my sub-culture, indie-rock magazine, even if Wal-Mart's music department claims to bring in 'the latest alternative music.'"
He goes on to say:
"BA has a history of representing a subculture of small-batch brewers. If you open the doors to every size of beer, BA loses some of its identity as a billboard for the little guy."
I understand the writer's irritation with what he interprets as an invasion into "his" sub-culture.
But here's another perspective on the situation: Take away the three full-page ads for A-B products found in the same issue of Beer Advocate, and that issue of Beer Advocate might not have appeared at all. Ditto for All About Beer and Draft magazines.
Yes, there are plenty of other beer ads in the beer magazines, but the majority of them are mostly quarter-page ads. That's all that most small brewers can afford, but that's probably not enough to keep the magazines going. Put another way, the "big" brewers (or, as the letter-writer calls them, "BudMillerCoors") help subsidize beer journalism.
If you enjoy reading Beer Advocate, thank A-B (and MillerCoors and some of the bigger importers) for helping make the magazine possible. Sometime in the next few weeks, InBev will likely complete its acquisition of Anheuser-Busch. Expect a fair amount of fist-pumping and "take thats" from beer bloggers and participants in the on-line forums as they celebrate A-B's "demise But here's another thought -- and now I'm quoting myself from a piece I wrote for the October issue of Modern Brewery Age:
The gloating may be premature. It’s hard to imagine Carlos Brito funding an endowed chair at the nation’s most prestigious brewing school, as A-B did at University of California-Davis some years ago. Flip through one of the beer-consumer magazines and look at the expensive glossy ads that A-B buys each month. Will the penny-pinching Brito continue the practice? Can the magazines survive if he does not?
And what about the “Here’s To Beer" campaign?
A few years ago, A-B suggested that brewers mount a collective, industry-wide campaign to promote beer as a sophisticated beverage for discerning consumers, something brewing needed as aging consumers turned to wine and spirits.
Brewers said no thanks, and beer geeks mocked the suggestion. (Would they have done the same if the idea had come from, say, Jim Koch?) A-B went ahead anyway -- and left no fingerprints. As far as the average consumer knows, this was just beer’s version of the milk industry’s “Got Milk?" campaign. Craft brewers in particular would have benefited from the project, but the opportunity is likely gone for good.
And so, apparently, is the Busch family. But as American brewers witness the end of an extraordinary saga, I hope they’ll take a moment to ponder the Long View and the Big Picture: For more than 140 years, the Busch fathers and sons waged war, created enemies, and broke hearts. But their warrior stance also inspired competitors to aim higher and work harder; inspired them to imagine a better beer. As the door closes, take a moment to say thanks.
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My thanks to Pete Reid, editor and publisher of Modern Brewery Age ,for allowing me to quote from my essay "Farewell and Thanks: Why The Busch Family Mattered," which appeared in the October 2008 issue. You can read the entire piece (and the entire issue) here.
As expected today, Anheuser-Busch shareholders have approved the sale of the company to InBev. There's still plenty of legal and financial work to be done on both sides (eg, regulatory approvals, stamp of approval on InBev's financing, etc.), but both sides expect to complete the sale before year's end.
Oh, this is the hard part: when companies merge, when buyouts occur, when two companies launch "joint ventures," the impact goes beyond shareholder statements and stock values. It affects human beings.
The "exiting" process (sounds like a term from a Kafka novel) is now underway at Miller, at Coors, and at Anheuser-Busch. People I respect and admire are losing their jobs. That's the reality.
The beer folk may snipe at the "corporate brewers" all they like, but the reality is that these companies are composed of human beings: The "they" at A-B is your neighbor down the street, the woman in the church choir, the guy you see walking his dog or run into at the coffeeshop, and the mom who always makes time for soccer team fund-raising. Real people. And now, lots of those real people are losing their jobs.
And while I'm at it: I know that many people in the beer world -- beermakers, beer geeks, bloggers, etc. -- despise A-B. But over the past 150 or years, it's been a great employer and provided millions of people and their families with good jobs. It's also been a good citizen in the St. Louis area, donating what is now probably hundreds of millions of dollars to various charitable groups, a tradition that began with Adolphus Busch back in the 1870s. It practiced affirmative action before it had to and hired women before it was required to do so. It's been a great company. Let's hope it continues to be one under the new leadership (which will likely take charge sometime before year's end.)
Website of Maureen Ogle, author and historian. Books include Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer; In Meat We Trust: An Unexpected History of Carnivore America; and Key West: History of An Island of Dreams.
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