Anheuser-Busch
Anheuser-Busch , the world's third largest brewing company in volume after
InBev and
SABMiller, and the largest in the
USA. The company is based in
St. Louis, Missouri, United States and brews over 65 different beers and malt liquors. Anheuser-Busch's best known
beers include brands such as
Budweiser, the
Busch and
Michelob families, and Natural Light. The company also produces a number of smaller-volume and specialty beers, nonalcoholic brews,
malt liquors (King Cobra and the Hurricane family), and flavored
malt beverages (e.g. the Bacardi family and Tequiza). "A-B", as the company is often called, owns 12 U.S. breweries.
Overseas, Anheuser-Busch operates 15 breweries - 14 in
China and one in the
United Kingdom; In
China, A-B operates Budweiser Wuhan International Brewing Company, Ltd. and
Harbin Brewery Group Ltd which A-B fully acquired in 2004. Chinese production of AB products in china started, in Wuhan, after their purchase of a local brewery in 1997. In the
United Kingdom, the Budweiser Stag Brewing Company Ltd. produces and packages Budweiser.
In addition, A-B supervises locally brewed Budweiser in seven other countries: Argentina, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Spain. A-B has 18 overseas offices.
A-B strategic equity investments include:
*50% of
Grupo Modelo in Mexico
*27% of
Tsingtao Brewery Company Ltd. in China.
In November 2004 A-B sold its 20% participation in CCU (Compañía de Cervecerías Unidas) in Chile to a Chilean Bank, in a public bid. Following the sale, A-B retains a non-controlling 10.8% stake in CCU-Argentina.[
1]
Anheuser-Busch owns
Busch Gardens,
SeaWorld, and several other
amusement parks and
resorts, as well as production,
transportation and packaging operations related to its beer business.
The
St. Louis Cardinals baseball team was owned by Anheuser-Busch from the mid
1950s until it was sold to a group of private investors in March
1996.
Busch Memorial Stadium, paid for and built by the brewery in the early 1960s, was recently demolished and replaced by a new ballpark. A-B signed an agreement for
the new ballpark to retain the "Busch Stadium" name on the new building.
(1) Source: Impact: Global News and Research for the Drinks Executive, Volume 33, Nos. 19 & 20,
October 1 & 15, 2003.
The company is known in the
United States for its huge
advertising presence, including a sports marketing division which creates advertising material for the
Super Bowl and many other sporting events. Famous Busch television campaigns have included:
*The "Gimme a light" spots;
*
Frogs saying "Bud-wei-ser." The ad campaign later spawned additional characters: Louie and Frankie the
chameleons and an inept
ferret hit man.
*The annual
Bud Bowl.
*The "
Waazzzup" series.
*The "
Real American Heroes/Real Men of Genius" series of humorous radio and television ads.
*They market their beer through the name NASCAR Busch Series and on Dale Earnhardt Jr's #8 Chevy Monte Carlo
*Bud Man is an advertising character for
Budweiser beer. He is a
superhero and appears on many products aimed at coeds on
University campuses. He also inspired
Duff Man, a character on
The Simpsons.
|
A pre-1911 "shorty" reefer bears an advertisement for Anheuser-Busch's Malt Nutrine tonic. The product was discontinued in 1942. |
Recently,
Miller Brewing began a series of commercials which featured "referees" calling "penalties" on people for drinking Bud Light (the largest selling beer in the US), and they would then take the Bud Light and replace it with Miller. Anheuser-Busch responded with their own "referees" commercials in which referees were taking people's Budweiser and keeping it for themselves. One such commercial showed the "referees" being confronted by the police.
|
The packaging plant in Saint Louis, Missouri. |
The world headquarters for Anheuser-Busch is in St. Louis, Missouri. The brewery there, the largest of the Anheuser-Busch breweries, was opened in
1852 and includes three buildings that are on the register of National Historic Landmarks. At the headquarters, near downtown Saint Louis, tours of the brewery are available to the public. The tour takes visitors through the complex, and those of the
legal age can enjoy two free glasses of beer at the end of the tour.
The company keeps a rotation of its famous
Clydesdale horses at its headquarters, and visitors to the brewery can observe the Clydesdales in their exercise field and see their places in the carriage house. The bulk of the herd is kept at the company farm in
St. Louis County.
*
Bud Dry is a
dry beer created by Anheuser-Busch in 1989. It was the first dry beer produced by an American brewer, and has fewer calories than
Budweiser.
*
Bud Ice is an
ice beer, created by Anheuser-Busch in 1994. A light beer version was also released the same year, known as
Bud Ice Light.
*
Natural Ice, popularly known as "Natty Ice", is an ice beer introduced nationally in 1996 (though released to select markets in 1995) when the practice of "icing" beer was adopted to increase alcohol content. Due to its relatively low price and high availability, it is popular at both high school and college parties in the United States. Outside of those two markets however it is more associated with
lower class culture and the phrase "Natty Drinker" is considered a derogatory term for
White Trash. The original light version,
Natural Light ("Natty Light"), debuted in 1977.
*
BE (B-to-the-E) is a "specialty beer" created for the Budweiser brand. Described as a combination of a beer and an energy drink, it contains caffeine, guarana, and ginseng with 6.6% alcohol by volume. B-to-the-E is marketed with the slogan "Beer With Something Extra". It's an actual mixture of beer and energy drink, with the flavor that one would expect from such a combination.
*
Rolling Rock is a brand of
pale lager beer distributed in green glass bottles with painted, rather than printed labels. From
1939 until
2006, Rolling Rock was brewed at the
Latrobe Brewing Company. In May,
2006, Anheuser-Busch purchased the Rolling Rock and Rock Green Light brands from
InBev. Anheuser-Busch began to brew Rolling Rock at the
Newark brewery plant in New Jersey in mid July 2006.
Besides the St. Louis brewery, Anheuser-Busch manufactures beer for U.S. consumption using an additional eleven "mega-breweries" in ten states:
*
Baldwinsville, New York (near
Syracuse)
*
Cartersville, Georgia*
Columbus, Ohio*
Fairfield, California [
2]
*
Fort Collins, Colorado*
Houston, Texas*
Jacksonville, Florida*
Los Angeles, California*
Merrimack, New Hampshire (near
Manchester)
*
Newark, New Jersey*
Williamsburg, Virginia*
Ventria Bioscience*
Adolphus Busch*
August Busch III*
St. Louis Refrigerator Car Company*
Anheuser-Busch Website*
Anheuser-Busch Web Page on the St. Louis Brewery Tour
