On a recent steamy Sunday afternoon, customers strolled the aisles of Glenn Miller’s Beer & Soda Warehouse, where overhead fans circulated the hot air.
People heading for picnics, graduations, and other gatherings in Lemoyne, a Pennsylvania community across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg, rushed into the store past a myriad of beer displays stacked with cases of top brands.
Next to 30 packs of Miller Lite, which retails for $24.99, was a stack of Bud Light. A large banner above it noted that a 30-pack was only $8.99 after a discount.
Andy Wagner, the store’s manager and 18-year veteran, said the Miller Lite sold well. And the Bud Light? Not as much.
“Right now it’s cheaper than some of the cases of water we sell in the back,” Wagner said, noting that Bud Light in-store sales are down 45 percent year-on-year since mid-April. “It just doesn’t move like it used to.”
Nearly three months after transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a video on her Instagram account to promote a bud-light contest, sparking far-right online outrage and a boycott, the beer brand is still struggling to win back loyal, long-term customers.
Bud Light was the best-selling beer in the United States for more than two decades. Revenue surpassed $5 billion last year, which is about 9 percent of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s revenue. But since the boycott, Bud Light has been dethroned by Modelo Especial. In the four weeks ending in mid-June, the amount of Bud Light sold nationwide fell by an average of 29 percent year-over-year, according to data from research firm NIQ, analyzed by consultancy Bump Williams.
Anheuser-Busch stock has also fallen more than 15 percent since early April. The company did not respond to a request for comment on this article.
In an interview with CBS Mornings Wednesday, Brendan Whitworth, chief executive officer of Anheuser-Busch North America Zone, acknowledged that the past few weeks have been “challenging” for the brand.
“The Bud Light discussion has moved away from the beer,” Whitworth said, adding that he takes responsibility for the controversy’s impact on the company’s employees, customers and distributors. “The conversation is contentious, and Bud Light really doesn’t belong there.”
When asked if he would run the campaign again with a transgender influencer, Mr Whitworth did not answer directly.
“There’s a big social discussion going on right now, and big brands are right in the middle of it,” he said. “And it’s not just our industry or Bud Light. It happens in retail. It happens in fast food.
“So what we need to understand is to deeply understand and value the consumer and what they want, what matters to them and what they expect from big brands.”
With the summer selling season already in full swing — the four months between May and August accounting for up to 40 percent of annual beer sales — Bud Light is wondering if the slump is temporary or represents the new normal.
“We’ve been at it for about 10 weeks now and we’re still seeing double-digit volume declines across the country,” said Bump Williams, who runs the consulting firm that bears his name. “This is no longer an anomaly. This is a worrying trend.”
According to a survey released this month, most major beer retailers, or wholesalers — middlemen who buy brands from breweries like Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors and then sell them to shops, restaurants and bars — believe the impact will last longer than six months by Wall Street investment bank Jefferies. A third of traders believe the effects on Bud Light will be permanent.
Mr Wagner said Anheuser-Busch made a mistake when its marketing violated what he described as “bar rules”. That means “no politics, no religion”. He pointed out that Glenn Miller’s has never allowed local politicians to put up signs in or around the store so as not to upset customers.
When asked how long he thought the decline in sales would last, Mr. Wagner shrugged. “I’ve seen longtime Bud Light customers trying other beers,” he said. “If they find something they like, they might not come back.”
Beer retailers, including many independent or family-run businesses, are keenly aware of the decline in bud light sales.
Steve Tatum, the CEO of family-owned Bama Budweiser in Montgomery, Alabama, paid for a local radio commercial to talk about the Bud Light backlash. “We at Bama Budweiser are also upset about this and have expressed our feelings to Anheuser-Busch senior leadership,” Mr. Tatum said in the ad. He added that his company, an independent wholesaler, employs “around 100 people who live here, work here and our children go to school here”.
Mr Tatum did not respond to a request for comment.
Anheuser-Busch also seems to be trying to remind the public of the people behind the beer. On Wednesday, the company released an advertising campaign titled “We Make the Beer,” which focuses on the many steps involved in making beer and the people behind the process. It has also hinted that it could bring back the popular character Bud Knight in advertising to help quell the controversy.
The company has also repurchased or exchanged boxes of Bud Light that are sitting in retailer warehouses as they approach their sell-by dates. According to Beer Business Daily, the company presented its dealers with a multi-stage plan in June that included sales incentive payments and reimbursement of freight and fuel costs by the end of the year.
For Glenn Miller, the ramifications of the Bud Light controversy didn’t have a major business impact. The retailer, which has been in business since 1986, sells 1,500 brands of beer in its 18,000 square meter warehouse.
“So if a consumer decides against a Bud Light that’s down 30 percent year-to-date, they can find something else to try,” Rodney Miller, Glenn Miller’s chief executive officer, said in an email. (Mr. Miller co-founded the retailer with his father Glenn.)
Mr. Wagner echoed these sentiments as he walked the aisles of the store.
“It’s not like they stopped drinking beer,” he said of his clients. “They just stopped buying Bud Light.”