Bud Light distributors give up, no longer expect sales to recover

Article content

As Bud Light sales continue to plummet, distributors of the beer and Anheuser-Busch’s other brands are done hoping for the best.

The wholesalers have thrown in the towel after four months of hiring freezes and layoffs, following Bud Light’s more than 25% drop in sales.

“Consumers have made a choice,” an executive at a Texas-based beer distributor who wanted to remain anonymous told the New York Post.

“They have left [Bud Light] and that’s how it’s going to be,” the exec continued. “I don’t envision a big percentage of them coming back.”

The executive said that winning the beer wars comes down to “whoever is best at marketing,” but efforts to promote Bud Light or other Anheuser-Busch beers, including Budweiser, Michelob Ultra and Busch Light, are simply not enough following the messy partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

“There is an increasing feeling that this [Bud Light] decline rate could last for a while and the distributors are worried about losing those drinkers to other similar brands,” David Steinmann, executive editor of Beer Marketer’s Insights, told the outlet.

Meanwhile, a former Anheuser-Busch executive argued that instead of laying off about 2% of their workforce, they should have gotten rid of one person: CEO Brendan Whitworth.

“My feeling is they would’ve been set up for more success if they actually laid off one person, which is their CEO,” Anson Frericks, Anheuser-Busch’s previous president of operations, said on Fox News’ Varney & Co.

RECOMMENDED VIDEO

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Play Video

“They said they’re trying to set this business up for future long-term success, but there’s no future at this company with the current CEO in place,” he declared.

“The CEO is accountable for the results of the organization, and the results of the last four months have been terrible.”

Frericks added: “You still have sales down 30% on their top brands. Billions of dollars of shareholder value have been razed, and it’s all due to the decisions made by the top leaders of the company.”

And it’s those who made “top” decisions that need to go.

“Every single CEO, they have a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders, not to these stakeholders in the organization that are pushing different agendas, activist agendas, political agendas,” Frericks explained.

“If you’re the CEO of a company, you’re the one who’s accountable for the results at the end of the day.”