It is reported that last Saturday evening at an establishment in New Albany, a customer approached the bar and told the bartender he could no longer drink Bud Light because—well, we can guess why—and so as a principled alternative, he’d prefer a Michelob Ultra instead.
This being the Michelob Ultra brewed by the very same multinational brewing corporation that brews Bud Light, thereby suggesting that in the minds of the most recent boycotters, there exist no secret subterranean passages connecting the many bulging pockets of Anheuser Busch-InBev (or whatever the stock market calls the bloated monolith nowadays), when in point of fact, there is one very large pocket, as Emily Stewart explains at Vox.
The Bud Light boycott, explained as much as is possible
Whether or not this current boycott will have much of an impact on Bud Light’s sales remains to be seen, but the answer is probably no. Boycotts tend to damage a company’s reputation more than they do its bottom line, and here, it’s not entirely clear how much reputational damage is even being done.
Big beer companies, such as AB InBev and Molson Coors and Constellation Brands, are constantly looking for new markets and new niches to shore up the growth of their existing beer portfolios, (beer writer Dave) Infante explained. “These are tough brands to find growth for — Bud Light has been shedding barrels of volume for years. It’s past its prime, it will not be the largest beer in the country much longer,” he said. “This is standard-issue pinkwashing stuff. They’re looking for ways to quote-unquote align their values with customer segments that they think maybe they can still find some loyalty in.”
Stewart patiently unravels the kerfuffle; meanwhile, if you dig deep enough (a millimeter should be sufficient), it emerges that big and bloated breweries, as well as big and bloated businesses in general, routinely donate/pander to/support all the American sides, sects and silos, and have been doing so for decades.
That’s called “hedging your bets.”
Whether left, right or center, it is a fool’s errand to try sorting things out, and the only rational response is to endeavor to shift one’s beer spending whenever possible to local, independent small businesses.
In short, the more beer business you conduct at a locally-owned, independent joint, the better for your community—even if the brand you’re consuming derives from a multinational. It’s called the Local...Read more
