Bar Reports 80% Drop in Bud Light Sales as Fallout Continues: 'They Just Won't Do Bud Light'
What is going on at bars in rural America should serve as a clear warning to Anheuser-Busch InBev over just how its real customers feel about the recent transgender Bud Light promotion, but it remains to be seen if the company will heed the clear and present danger going woke is causing to its bottom line.
Customers at the Old Corral Bar in Cornville, Arizona, have spoken, and as far as they are concerned, Bud Light is permanently off their lists of beverage choices, The Epoch Times reported Saturday.
Despite the beer brand’s widely mocked attempt to limit the damage from the mess it made by putting the face of transgender activist and TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney on a can of Bud Light, customer Scott Bradshaw said he won’t be drinking it.
“I think it was a ridiculous thing any marketing person or company could have ever done,” the Sedona, Arizona, resident told The Epoch Times.
Still, Bradshaw was not happy about some of the fallout from boycotts.
“I feel sorry for the salespeople who suddenly aren’t getting any work. They’re getting undermined,” the bar patron said.
The customer boycott is having an effect on Anheuser-Busch’s bottom line.
Last week, it was revealed that the company lost more than $5 billion in market value in the 12 days after the Mulvaney promotion.
According to the Times, Bud Light was America’s top-selling beer in 2020, accounting for 18 percent of sales. But that status seems to be in danger.
Another bar in Cornville reported a drop in sales of 80 percent in just the past week, the report said. Bars are finding the beer is a no-sale.
Haley Vanzandt, co-owner of the Robbers Roost called the drop in sales “huge.”
“It used to be one of the two best sellers. We have other things to sell. People are just switching to different beers,” Vanzandt told the Times. “They just won’t do Bud Light.”
Most of the customers eschewing the brand feel that Anheuser-Busch went into “politics” by enlisting Mulvaney to sell its products, the bar owner said.
“I don’t think they should mix the politics in at all. Everybody else feels the same way,” Vanzandt insisted.
Over in Prescott, Arizona, a bartender at the 1881 Spirits bar also reported that Bud Light sales are way, way down thanks to the boycott.
“It’s not selling as much,” bartender Steve Krauss said, adding that “everyone has got their own opinion. What might float with one person might not float with another person. It’s like that with everything.”
“Here’s how I would have done it. I wouldn’t have made it gender related. I would have stuck with the frogs. They were banging with that,” he said, recalling a humorous Budweiser ad campaign from the 1990s.
One company, though, might be thrilled with Bud Light’s self-destructive promotion: Coors Light is seeing a huge increase in sales, according to the Times.
The outlet took pains to note that very few of the owners and employees of the bars and liquor stores it interviewed were interested in taking any stance on the politics of Bud Light’s choices of pitchmen.
Old Corral bartender Eric Reyes put it succinctly: “Go be whoever you want to be [but] keep your politics out of beer.”
But the fact is, their customers are making the choices for them. Bud Light is on the outs, and it remains to be seen whether customers will go back.
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