There has been a big storm here in the US, not in a tea cup, but a beer can, with Bud Light beer, a once good drop, featuring transgender “influencer” Dylan Mulvaney drinking transgender-themed beer in a bathtub. We have seen things like this, as companies go woke. But, the backlash, as detailed below has been greater than expected, since beer is pretty much the cis male drink. A beer merchandiser said of the situation; "I've never seen such little sales as in the past few days... I can't feed my family." Go woke; go broke, indeed.
It is not clear why a beer company would go down this line, but it is weird times.
“The backlash against Bud Light has intensified following a controversial ad campaign featuring transgender 'influencer' Dylan Mulvaney drinking transgender-themed beer in a bathtub.
According to John Ruch, country music singer and owner of the Redneck Riviera bar in Nashville, TN, Bud Light used to be their most popular beer.
"The customers decide. Customers are king," he told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday. "I own a bar in downtown Nashville called Redneck Riviera. Our number-one selling beer up until a few days ago was what? Bud Light. We got cases and cases and cases of it sitting back there. But in the past several days, you’re hard-pressed to find anyone ordering one. So as a business owner, I go, hey if you aren’t ordering it, we got to put something else in here. At the end of the day, that’s capitalism. That’s how it works."
According to Rich, fans are finding it "hard to stay loyal" to now-woke brands, and are instead voting with their wallets.
"And there are tons of up-and-coming American brands that people are flooding to right now," he said.
In one video, a beer merchandiser said of the situation; "I've never seen such little sales as in the past few days... I can't feed my family."
At Braintree Brewhouse in Massachusetts, Bud Light normally outsells rivals Miller Lite and Coors Light by 25:1, according to owner Alex Kesaris, who said that this week, 80% of Bud Light drinkers ordered something else, while the 20% who did order it "weren’t on social media and hadn’t heard yet," regarding the transgender ad campaign.
"I think society flexes it muscles sometimes and reminds manufacturers that the consumer is still in charge," said Jeff Fitter, owner of Case & Bucks restaurant and sports bar in Barnhart Missouri, in a statement to Fox Business. "In Bud Light's effort to be inclusive, they excluded almost everybody else, including their traditional audience."
Fitter says he's witnessed a 'catastrophic decrease' in sales of Anheuser-Busch bottled products this week of 30%, while draught beer sales plummeted 50%.
Even in Hell's Kitchen, New York, Bud Light sales were down 70% at one pub, according to Fox Business.
The bar typically sells though three kegs of Bud Light at the event — a total of 495 12-ounce pours.
The bar sold only four 12-ounce Bud Light bottles this week, as the dart players held a mass protest against their league sponsor.
"They've already done enough damage in one week to disrupt year-long sales projections," one beer-sales representative told the outlet. "You don't just make up those sales. People aren't going to drink twice as much Bud Light the following weekend to recover the lost business."”