Montana Bars Report Bad News for Bud Light as Backlash to Going Woke Continues
Patrons at bars in Montana’s biggest city are joining other Americans in turning down Bud Light over its partnership with transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
Big Sky Country is apparently not the market for the left’s “woke” gender agenda or Anheuser-Busch’s decision to embrace the face of it.
KTVQ in Billings spoke to numerous people in the service industry to gauge the support for Bud Light among regulars.
Surprise! The CBS affiliate found that some people in the area no longer want anything to do with the once-great, former-American brand.
One thing was clear: Sales are down.
Since Bud Light printed a picture of Mulvaney’s face on a can of its beer, one bar in Billings said sales of the brand are down almost 40 percent.
Aaron Swain, who owns a bar called the Red Door, said, “The first 18 days of April versus the first 18 days of March, we’re down 38 percent on Bud Light.”
Swain said his Montana establishment is staying on the sidelines.
“We don’t want to offend anybody or offend one side or the other,” he said. “We want to make everybody happy and stay neutral. Everybody’s entitled to their opinion, but yeah, we’re not going to dive into it.”
But Swain did comment on the controversy as a whole and made a prediction.
“I think Bud Light is the first major distributor to jump off that bridge, and seeing the results, I don’t think many will be following,” Swain told the outlet.
KTVQ also spoke to a bartender named Ashley Winshell who works at a joint called Lucky Louie’s.
Winshell said she’s heard a lot of customers discuss Bud Light’s marketing decision, and some of them are less than pleased, to put it mildly.
“I’ve heard comments of, ‘I’ll never drink that beer again. I never really liked it anyway. I never drank it,’” she said. “You know those types of comments.”
She added she has also heard a “lot of derogatory things and bar talk and things that are not so nice” about the brand.
Montana might seem like an obvious place not to hawk “woke” beer represented by men in dresses. But Bud Light sales are down substantially nationwide amid an ongoing boycott, one beer industry outlet reported.
BREWBOUND reported Bud Light off-premise sales were down 7 percent in the first week after the company partnered with Mulvaney.
Meanwhile, sales of Coors Light jumped 11 percent while Miller Lite sales jumped 17 percent during the same period.
Coast-to-coast, people who are fed up with corporate activism are sending a message to “woke” Anheuser-Busch in the simplest way possible — which is by speaking with their wallets.
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