BeerBorg

Here's an interesting article that was on BrewDog's blog last December. It includes this quote from the owner of a brewery that was bought out. From the Blog:

Nøgne Ø

Within months of selling to a mega beer corporation, Nøgne Ø founder and former CEO Kjetil Jikiun posted this message on Facebook. He said the new buyers had ensured "Nøgne Ø The Uncompromising Brewery was changing into Grey Ø The Average Brewery" and the new values introduced were "Good Enough. Mediocre. Average." Kjetil left, obviously distressed as to what became of the brewery he loved. At the time of the acquisition both Kjetil and Hansa (the buyer) insisted nothing would change. It obviously did, and quickly.

There are also other interesting tidbits from the Elysian, Lagunitas, and Goose Island purchases.(NB1403)

The article you posted is very much in line with a conversation I had with an exec of Budweiser at a charity event.
He basically said when AB/InBev buys a craft brewery they initially allow the brewery to retain control over recipes and process (seems to be the statement everyone makes when they are first bought out), but as time goes on they gradually take more and more control over the decisions being made at the brewery, and he flat out told me the end game was to "phase them out"

How much of that is legit and straight up or just some exec talking to be talking...I don't know.

I also had a conversation with the Head Brewer at the Van Nuys location. They are going to start brewing Golden Road's 329 Lager there. And he told me he hates that he has to brew their recipe and as soon as they let him he is going to change the recipe because he doesn't like using specialty malts. In fact they don't use them at all there and he doesn't want to deal with storage issues of having a specific place just for those specialty malts.

Again, this is all stuff in an informal discussion, so its to be taken with a grain of salt. But for me, coming from who it came from, there is at least a smidgen of validity.

Apparently, it's true.

click here

bpgreen wrote:Apparently, it's true.

click here

Awww crap!

Crap is right. I just ordered some stuff from Adventures in Homebrewing, guess I'll keep my online business to them and a few others that are still small.

Judging by NBs Facebook page a lot of folks will take their business elsewhere.

I use MoreBeer mostly. Mostly have used Northern when they do things like 3 kits for 17.76, or 14.92 each.

Wow, those facebook comments are amazing, and well deserved. And his letter announcing the purchase is a bunch of shit. If he thinks nothing will change, he's blind, but I'm sure he knows it will change, he just has to sign his name to the letter that was drafted for him by AB Inbev. If a company has a division called the Global Disruptive Growth Unit, their entire existence is to bring about change.

I get their magazines, I think I should call them and request that I be permanently removed from their mailing list. But really, it's too late, AB Inbev already has my info. I'm sure they were provided all that info during thier discovery phase of the purchase.

I like Morebeer and Rebel Brewing for my online orders.
Yea, those comments are brutal but made me laugh.

I kinda liked Midwest's Beer.Simply Beer kits too. The two I tweaked were winners. Oh well.

At least I have my LHBS and Great Fermentations.

Most of the commenters were clueless that Farley sold out years ago to private equity and that is who sold to InBev.

SomeGuyBrewing wrote:The article you posted is very much in line with a conversation I had with an exec of Budweiser at a charity event.
He basically said when AB/InBev buys a craft brewery they initially allow the brewery to retain control over recipes and process (seems to be the statement everyone makes when they are first bought out), but as time goes on they gradually take more and more control over the decisions being made at the brewery, and he flat out told me the end game was to "phase them out"

How much of that is legit and straight up or just some exec talking to be talking...I don't know.

While I don't understand business or economics, it seems to me that when this trend of buying out a company and then phasing them out would become obvious after a while, and the strategy would have to change somehow.

That being said, if a big guy comes up to a small guy and offers him a wad of money, the temptation may be too great for the small guy. After working incessantly for years, he can recoup his investment and then some with just a stroke of a pen. So maybe this strategy is viable even in the long term.

You won't see a "buy and phase out" strategy here. AB InBev is getting closer to the end consumer by this move. They will invest in the business, probably dramatically increasing their ecommerce presence, and I would expect that they'd slowly explore rolling out retail locations.

I haven't done much business with NB, I have bought some equipment and recipes from them. I do most of my online ordering from Jasper's Homebrewing (multiple 1 & 5G recipes) and Midwest Supplies - the simply.beer 5G recipes of which I've brewed all 6 of them now and they all turned out good. I missed out on the NB $14.92 Sale, probably should have ordered at least 3 of them. I just bought some ingredients from the semi-local home brew store Saturday and that went well.

RickBeer wrote:You won't see a "buy and phase out" strategy here. AB InBev is getting closer to the end consumer by this move. They will invest in the business, probably dramatically increasing their ecommerce presence, and I would expect that they'd slowly explore rolling out retail locations.

THIS. This is exactly their strategy. E-commerce in the beer industry is going to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years. The closer ABI can get to people who are already buying beer-related stuff online, the better they are positioning themselves for future e-commerce growth.

Well if Evily agrees with me, I must be right!