Beer Radar

Last week, the Brewers Association posted its annual list of the top 50 American craft brewers. You can see it here. It’s missing one very big name: Anheuser-Busch. 

Yes, the multinational corporation whose sales account for 48.5 percent of domestic beer sales is actually one of America’s leading so-called craft brewers. At least, that’s the claim in the company’s annual report: “With significant investments in craft beer, including long-standing alliances with Widmer, Redhook and Kona and more recent agreements to distribute Goose Island, Old Dominion and Fordham, Anheuser-Busch is now the third-largest player in the craft beer segment and sucessfully added regional brands that provide scale in opportunity markets.”

“Scale in opportunity markets” is corporate speak for Here’s a way to make a buck while the rest of our brands tank.

• Annual growth of Bud Light (America’s biggest-selling brand): 2 percent.
• Annual growth of craft beers: 16 percent.

‘Nuff said.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 7:48 pm and is filed under Beer etc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.