(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Bud Light sales have plunged in the wake of the company’s recent ill-advised foray into the ongoing culture war over the normalization of transgenderism, Fox Business reported.
“They’ve already done enough damage in one week to disrupt year-long sales projections,” said one beer sales representative who sells to massive distributors such as Costco.
“You don’t just make up those sales,” the representative added. “People aren’t going to drink twice as much Bud Light the following weekend to recover the lost business.”
The boycott comes after Anheuser–Busch, the parent company of the Bud Light, hired transgender social-media personality Dylan Mulvaney to represent brand—a slap in the face to many typical Bud Light drinkers.
Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid, a marketing coordinator for the company, claimed that it was necessary to detach the “declining” Bud Light brand from its frat-party image, instead emphasizing diversity, equity, and inclusion.
In the wake of Bud Light’s betrayal of its customers, several high-profile musicians announced that they would boycott the beer, including Travis Tritt, John Rich and Kid Rock.
Longtime customers likewise decided over the weekend to drink beers made by companies that do not feel the need to showcase their leftist values.
Jeff Fitter, owner of Missouri sports bar Case & Bucks, said that Bud Light has estranged the vast majority of its normal customer base.
“I think society flexes it muscles sometimes and reminds manufacturers that the consumer is still in charge,” Fitter said. “In Bud Light’s effort to be inclusive, they excluded almost everybody else, including their traditional audience.”
Fitter’s bar, which is located near St. Louis—the hometown of Anheuser-Busch—saw a massive drop in the sales of Anhueser–Busch products over the weekend, including a 30% decline in bottles, and 50% drop in drafts.
Bud Light—which reportedly bests Miller Lite and Coors Light by a 25-to-one ratio at the Braintree Brewhouse, near Boston—was almost universally boycotted, according to owner Alex Kesaris.
Nearly 80% of those who normally opt for Bud Light ordered alternative beers, he said. The remaining 20% who placed their normal Bud Light order “weren’t on social media and hadn’t heard yet” about the company’s new collaboration with Mulvaney.
“They didn’t order it again,” he said, after they were informed of Bud Light’s marketing gaffe.
