Read This: Anheuser-Busch’s Lawyers Fight “Stone Bill”

15 thoughts on “Read This: Anheuser-Busch’s Lawyers Fight “Stone Bill””

1. I hate to agree with A-B, but they have called points.

2. Craft brewers hate the 3 tier system, it’s what gives A-B such an advantage. It’s also pathetic that they Are attacking the number of promised employees with their own production benchmarks. If you make a low quality low price product and concentrate on the bottom line, you are going to employ way less workers.
   This letter is what hatin’ is all about! How can you possibly argue that brew pubs are a bad thing…

   • Craft brewers hate the 3-tier system? I’ve spoken with several brewers in Georgia (I used to do a podcast which featured interviews with brewmasters) that love the 3-tier system. It seems that a lot of breweries don’t want to have to figure out how to distribute their beer, and I don’t blame them. There are systems in place that do it for them and they appreciate the way it currently stands. It seems that a lot of breweries would like to see the laws tweaked a bit, but I’ve never heard anyone say they wish the 3-tier system to be completely eradicated. The 3-tier system is a well-oiled (read: adequately-oiled) machine that is pretty fine the way it is. I think there could stand to be some exceptions and things changed here and there, but without 3-tier, life is going to be much harder for craft breweries, ESPECIALLY startups who are already forking over around a million dollars just to get their beer on the market. To add distribution on top of that? Holy crap.

     • You’re right, I meant the current systEm of laws that mandate the 3 tier system. Every brewery tour I’ve been on in GA I’ve heard complaints that they are not legally allowed to serve their biggest fans in their own place of business, and can’t send kegs to their favorite bars. Craft brewers should use distribution systems, but also have the option to serve from their own place of business. A-B probably wrote the 3 tier only mandate because they don’t want a brewpub for their swill, and so they want to hurt their competition by making craft brewers play by A-B’s rules

3. The employment numbers are off because A-B does not account for the employment of the restaurant, Stone Bistro Gardens, which will accompany the brewery. At no point did Stone claim that the 400 positions would be salaried ones, as A-B infers and uses as a primary point for undermining the pending legislation. I will even grant that 400 may be an optimistic, but when considering redistricting and increasing representatives that number seems feasible. I find it difficult to sympathize with A-B given the overwhelming position that they currently hold in the marketplace. The three tier system works for A-B, so I can understand why they object to letting others obtain an unfair advantage to an already imbalanced structure.

   • also take into account the automation A-B has in place.

4. I hate to agree with A-B. However, the bill basically makes it sound like you are free to do anything as long as you make less than 6 million barrels a year. Only an NBev or Miller Coors could feasably do that so they would not benefit. Either way A-B will probably stall this long enough for the Senate session to end in June.

   • Have you read the actual bill? It isn’t a free-for-all. It only affects brewpubs by 1] taking them from the current 2,000 barrels per year limit to 500,000 barrels per year, 2] allowing them to finally distribute beer off site, and 3] removing the current Pint Bill limits (patrons can only purchase up to 48 ounces for on-site consumption). It’s giving something to an element of the brewing business that’s extremely limited right now, and is still far from a free-for-all..

5. boycott Stella…

6. Shouldn’t shock anyone who knows this company… Spent 25 years building this brand and all they have ever cared about is AB. Now the Bankers from Brazil continue the tradition… AB doesn’t want competition because they haven’t innovated or introduced anything since Budweiser! Every new brand is a me too, Bud Light, Shock Top, etc. all followed someone else’s idea!… arrogance and marketing muscle is what they do well and in the end they will continue to loose sales and share! At least a brewer like Stone is innovating and developing the category and industry. Shame on you Anheuser Busch… as usual you are just being the Bully and trying to squish the little guy! Not even an American Company anymore!!! Stone is an American Company just like our little brewery… Support your local American Craft Breweries

   • they have innovated!!!!

     Haven’t you ever heard of Bud Light Strawberrrrrita???

7. I think the degree of audacity shown by Anheuser-Busch – either in it’s former status as an American brewery or its current one as part of the international mega-conglomerate, AB/InBev – in challenging this bill in South Carolina is shocking when you look at AB’s own history of tied houses, intimidation by wholesalers of any brewery that tried to challenge them, buy-outs of smaller breweries that dared to compete on a regional basis, exclusivity deals with sports leagues and public venues of every description, and the already totally lop-sided competitive advantage they enjoy over ALL craft brewers, including Samuel Adams and Stone and every other larger brewery. The three-tier system works “so well” because AB was largely responsible for creating it and steering state governments into evolving it to their competitive advantage.

   What’s got AB and its corporate overseers, back home in Belgium and Brazil, so suddenly concerned about “fairness” in the marketplace is that craft beer is the one and only trend in the beverage business that they haven’t been able to impede by either intimidation, manipulation of local wholesaler policies, scorn, buy-outs, or simply pouring enough advertising and promotional dollars into the marketplace that smaller breweries were effectively drowned out by the sheer omnipresence of the Bud name and image. By the time AB even started to take craft beer seriously as a business trend, there were already far too many brewers for them to even think of buying them all out. Now, with the craft culture having grown from fewer than 100 breweries in 1990 to almost 3,800 today, suddenly AB is starting to make noises like they’re the victim of unfairness in the beer market? What the letter contains from their lawyers can and should be completely discounted. Lawyers get paid to whip up justification out of either slim pickings or thin air and making the ridiculous seem plausible is their primary task. Remove the legalese from the thing and what it really says is, “Our client feels threatened in the marketplace and we want you to vote against your own economic best interests, against new jobs and whole new business classes (wonder how many hop fields exist in SC? How many yeast labs? How many brewing equipment manufacturers?) simply to insure that AB, our uber-wealthy client, gets to continue trying to club competing breweries like baby harp seals.” The people of South Carolina stand to gain FAR more by developing an in-state craft brewing business community, whose growth potential may well be unlimited, than to prop up some foreign-owned corporate carpetbaggers whose sole interest, as has been historically proven countless times, is their own P&L statement.

8. A-B just wants to maintain unfair advantages and the ability to maintain control over product placement in the market. The current three tier system is a joke with A-B and Miller Coors controlling the second tier and thus product placement in the stores (third tier).

9. I find not much good in any of the practices of A-B.

10. Their third bullet point is so ridiculous. A huge, automated brewery has the economies of scale to run more efficiently, especially since the production breweries don’t do any research and development. So, I could easily see a lot more man-hours needed to make bigger beers, possibly barrel-aging, using non-traditional practices as Stone is known for… Those all take man hours.
    But the main point they are missing is the fact that there will be a FULL SERVICE RESTAURANT, BAR, AND FARM.

    They aren’t just making beer. It will take over 100 employees just to run the restaurant portion. Easy. Dishwashers, servers, bartenders, managers, hosts, bussers. All paying jobs that AB will NEVER be providing at the facility they mention, but jobs they will be blocking because they need to bully.

    It’s sad.

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