![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Titanic.jpg\" "\\"Titanic\\"")
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\u00a0During the\u00a0first years in the beer business, while riding trucks as a helper,\u00a0\u00a0as we would drive to the next stop, the drivers would talk about brands from the 40’s and 50’s that had died and gone away.\u00a0 While I found their stories interesting, little\u00a0did I know that there were a number of brands in the market at that time, that soon would also<\/i> disappear or become\u00a0non-factors.\u00a0 Including, but not limited to Schlitz, Jax, Pearl, Hamm’s, Pabst, Stroh and many others.<\/p>\n
Some years later, while at Texas Beers, I got a visit from the Spoetzl Brewery sales manager. He asked me to handle Shiner.\u00a0 At the time, all the brewery had was Shiner Premium, and we were lucky to sell even a pallet every two months.\u00a0 Shiner took off a couple of years later when Carlos Alverez bought the brewery and introduced the Bock.\u00a0 When Alverez bought the brand, Shiner was close to becoming extinct.<\/p>\n
Beer Marketer’s Insights<\/em> just published a list of nine beers Americans no longer drink.\u00a0 For some of these brands, the explanation of their demise is easy. \u00a0One such beer is Amstel Light.\u00a0 Once Heineken Light was introduced, it was obvious what Heineken’s priority would be, and it was not<\/i> Amstel Light.<\/p>\n The other beers that have gone extinct can be explained by pricing or lack of focus.\u00a0 For example, Old Milwaukee, Milwaukee’s Best (and light), and Miller High Light have all gone the way of the dinosaur.\u00a0 MGD lost its way, too.\u00a0 Budweiser Select never got off the ground, and now with Select 55, it won’t.\u00a0 Of all of these nine brands, Michelob is the one that should not be on the list.\u00a0 It really wasn’t that many years ago that Michelob was “the super-premium” beer.\u00a0 I can remember the days when Michelob was served at an event or party and thinking, \u201cthis is a special evening.\u201d The iconic bottle not only stood out, but it really said something about the beer\u2019s image.<\/p>\n One could say that with the great success of Michelob Ultra, Michelob is the personification of a line extension becoming the primary seller.\u00a0 The same is true with Budweiser and Bud Light, Coors and Coors Light, and Miller and Miller Lite.\u00a0 If the trend continues, Michelob bottles will soon be part of the beer can collectors\u2019 website.<\/p>\n How all of this plays out in the retail trade is the real question.\u00a0 Can distributors, or even should<\/i> distributors, continue to keep these brands alive and in these stores given their lack of support and the fact that there are many more brands, mostly crafts, that have a greater pull.\u00a0 These nine brands are from major suppliers, so can their pressure on the distributor keep them alive?\u00a0 As a former distributor I’d be inclined to offer brands that the consumer is looking for with the belief that the velocity rate will support the sales.\u00a0 Relationships can only go so far.<\/p>\n In recent years we have seen a revival of certain “dead” brands with Pabst Blue Ribbon leading the way.\u00a0 As I mentioned earlier, Shiner was one of those dead brands not so many years ago, Schlitz is making a small comeback effort and there are others. Perhaps in the future we’ll see Michelob return and become the powerhouse it once was.\u00a0 Until then, maybe all the industry is\u00a0doing with these brands is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0During the\u00a0first years in the beer business, while riding trucks as a helper,\u00a0\u00a0as we would drive to the next stop, the drivers would talk about brands from the 40’s and 50’s that had died and gone away.\u00a0 While I found their stories interesting, little\u00a0did I know that there were a number of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2xRTi-7L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":546,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions\/546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerbusinessunplugged.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}