Challenging Bud On Its Home Turf

摘要

When Tom Schlafly started making craft beer two decades ago in Anheuser-Busch's hometown of St. Louis, local bar owners gave the brewer a standard response on sales calls: "We already stock all the beers." In local parlance, that meant Anheuser-Busch's full lineup, not just Bud and Bud Light. "It was kind of like selling a foreign car in Detroit," says Schlafly, president of Schlafly Beer, "almost like heresy." That's starting to change. Anheuser-Busch's 2008 takeover by Belgium's InBev has undermined loyalty going back generations in St. Louis, where the U.S. King of Beers has been based since its founding in 1852.