OAKBROOK TERRACE, Ill. -- As much of the convenience-store industry picks up and moves to Las Vegas this week to learn about new products and best practices, the biggest news in the beverage industry will be playing out in Belgium and the United Kingdom. It's in these countries that leaders of the two largest beer companies in the world-- Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller, respectively--will strategize how best to get a merger completed or, alternately, avoid one altogether.
AB InBev has until this Wednesday to make a deal happen or to request an extension from the British Takeover Panel. SABMiller has already said no to three bids and signs point to AB InBev CEO Carlos Brito preparing to take the gloves off and get hostile in his bid "to build the first truly global beer company.”
Before things get too heated, I have to ask: How would this combination affect the U.S. beer market?
I've read and heard much about the desire for a global company, one that can bring Budweiser to Africa and Miller Lite to South America. I see the upside financially of being the leading beer company in every major beer market on the planet.
But in the United States, craft beers are currently king—all apologies to Bud, even if it outsells all the craft beers combined. To many craft-beer drinkers, “Anheuser-Busch” is already a dirty word; it’s the giant corporation that wants to buy up all the profitable beers in the country and water them down.
Its chief equalizer, of course, is the fact there is a close second in MillerCoors, SABMiller's partnership with Molson Coors in the United States. It's the other behemoth that, in some consumers' eyes, can't wait to take over a good independent brew. Two superpowers in a beer-brewing cold war, each one keeping the other from pushing things too far.
Once that balance is gone, A-B will stand as the undisputed czar of the U.S. beer market.
Or will it? We can also expect the U.S. beer market to be dismantled by regulators. Could Molson Coors walk away with Miller and Miller Lite? These are namesake brews that helped build Milwaukee! Will Constellation or Heineken USA take Bass and Boddingtons? And are you, as a retailer, ready for the distribution changes that would come as a result?
Maybe I'm too much of a traditionalist, but I can't help but wonder if this is really what's best for beer in the United States.
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