As I write these words, my oldest son is upstairs packing up his clothes to head off to college tomorrow. It’s hard to believe that I have a son going to college. I’m only 42. And not only that, he’s going to the same college I attended exactly 24 years ago today, the University of Texas at Austin. I recognize in his face the same combination of excitement, anticipation, fear, and constipation that I had. He will be staying within a block of where I stayed my freshman year. He will be going to the same parties, studying in the same library (hopefully), and eating at the same tired pizzerias and sandwich shops on the same “drag.”
The industry was now more aligned with satisfying demand. Craft brewers have arrived.
But there are some considerable differences. UT is a huge campus, and we crawled about campus constantly consulting paper maps trying to find our classes during that first week. My boy has a UT app on his iPhone, which maps out where each class is relative to his current position using GPS. I had to run around campus signing up for the classes I wanted to take. He merely sat as his laptop and registered. I wrote my class notes on notebook paper, and typed my papers on an actual typewriter. He will take his laptop to class and print his papers out on a color printer the size of a shoebox. Damn kids these days. They have it easy.
To add insult to injury, the choice of beers in the local grocery store and the choice of taps available in Sixth Street bars will be much better for him. My son (when he turns 21, of course), will have so many diverse beers available to him that, yes, I admit it makes me jealous. Back in 1987, the choices were Bud, Miller Lite, Coors Light, Corona, and Heineken. Today there is of course a rainbow of craft beers—both local and from afar. Young adults today see it as a given, and perhaps are unaware how far we’ve come, as an industry, from that point to this. To say the least, it was not an easy or quick transition for an industry that’s been doing things pretty much the same way since the repeal of Prohibition (may the gods bless it).
One could make the legitimate case that the rapid growth and availability of craft beers is driven by consumers. Efficient marketplaces, we are told in economics, must always adapt themselves to the Vox Publica. The people’s desires will be served. But what may not surprise you is that the strongest players in any industry dominated by a few well-capitalized companies can strongly affect the public’s desires—in our case through a saturation of the airwaves, controlling of distribution, shelf space and taps, and through a systematic domination of sports, that all-important doorway to the average young man’s heart and soul.
And I’m sure you’re shocked, shocked to learn that even some borderline dirty tricks were employed. On Oct. 13, 1996, Anheuser-Busch’s vice president of communications took Jim Koch and Sam Adams Boston Lager to task on “Dateline NBC” for being brewed under contract in Pittsburgh. A-B also filed a complaint with the BATF during that time against Pete’s Wicked Ale, citing language on the label describing the beer as being brewed “one batch at a time,” even though each batch was 400 barrels. And then in March 1996, A-B announced to its distributors that they would now be giving A-B its “total commitment” in the form of exclusivity—in other words, it informed their distributors that they would only carry A-B products, with penalties for noncompliance. At the time Brandweek said that A-B was trying to “legally squash competitors.”
And it wasn’t just A-B: Miller Brewing Co., Coors Brewing Co., and Heineken USA (called Van Munching & Co. at the time), while not demanding that their distributors jettison craft brands, “strongly encouraged” their distributors not to take on competing brands.
