Craft Beer Big Beer

[darkstar965]

Interesting piece here on the battle for transparency in labeling with small craft beers owned by large breweries. In essence, the issue (quoting from the article) is this:

Straddling the fence in the fight over transparency is Widmer Brothers Brewing (whose varieties include Raspberry Russian Imperial Stout and Drop Top Amber Ale) and its sister craft brewers Redhook Ale Brewery and the Kona Brewing Co., all based in the craft-crazy town of Portland, Ore. A-B InBev owns 32 percent of those brands' parent, Craft Brew Alliance, but is mentioned on none of their packaging or in any of their promotions.

[TedE]

See the discussion here

[ad.mich]

The whole setup of the CBA is as convoluted as, well... a CBA.

So the CBA company is based in Portland (where Widmere was founded) but Redhook is keeping their offices in Seattle (now CBA offices) and their massive production facility in Woodinville.

If AB has 32% of the parent company, that leaves 68% of the company for 3 breweries. If they all have around 22% then AB has more weight and would only need one vote from the 3 to carry a majority vote (albeit the breweries could still outvote). But this is all speculation.

My regional bias might be showing here but IMO many of the deeper cuts on the Redhook and Widmere product lines are quite good. If AB can swing their weight and put them on a shelf I'd certainly they rather do that than keep trying to push things like Bud Black or Platinum or whatever metal/color/test item they want to brand with next.

[TedE]

My regional bias might be showing here but IMO many of the deeper cuts on the Redhook and Widmere product lines are quite good.

Aye, there's the rub. I think Big Beer is starting to slowly learn it's lesson that craft beer is a massive growth market. The previous strategy was to simply try to physically dominate shelf space by hook or crook, and hope to cut off air supply to the micros. While this undoubtedly still happens I think they've realized that the demand for "real" beer is still taking money from their pockets. Now we are seeing them buy up larger crafts and assimilate the flagship beers while letting the niche brewing still continue (see: Goose Island). Unfortunately I think it's still too early in the game to determine what the long term effect will be. For some of these places the head brewers and staff are still in place and producing the same product; InBev and the like have just added them to the portfolio.

I fear that the Borg may start noticing "inefficiencies" in these product lines over time and quality will revert to the mean, as it were. That would be sad on so many levels.