Everybody
loves full-flavored craft beer. (Well, almost everybody; there are still a lot
of Coors Light drinkers.) In the last couple decades, so-called craft beers
have taken an increasing share of the beer market. Their percentage is still
small, but it’s enough so the big guys have taken notice. MolsonCoors/MillerCoors,
Anheuser-Busch InBev and others are marketing their brands as craft, e.g. Blue
Moon, Shock Top. They also are busy buying up small breweries. Boulevard,
Widmer, Lagunitas, Firestone-Walker are among the many dozens who have outside
ownership.
Can you find the name Anheuser-Busch InBev anywhere on this label?
The
craft-beer industry is maturing and entrepreneurial founders of breweries are
looking to retirement or a payday – or may have investors who are – or have
grand visions of expansion. The giant beverage companies are eager to add an
admired brew to their roster of brands. A few, such as New Belgium Brewing (Fat
Tire) have taken a different path: employee ownership. Others, like Full Sail,
have private equity funds as owners. But as Boston Beer founder Jim Koch
recently told a gathering of brewers, PEFs are not content with collecting a
share of profits. They expect a “liquidity event” event within a few years,
i.e. a sale for cash.
Try to find on the label or in advertising, though, who owns a brand. They want their consumers to envision hands-on entrepreneurs working with a tight group of enthusiast-employees. The giant beer companies believe that disclosing a brand’s corporate ownership spoils the craft-brewery cachet. So you won’t find any mention of it.
Small – Annual production of 6 million barrels of beer or less.
Independent – Less than 25 percent of the craft brewery is owned or controlled by an alcoholic beverage industry member that is not itself a craft brewer.
Traditional – A brewer that has a majority of its total beverage alcohol volume in beers whose flavor derives from traditional or innovative brewing ingredients and their fermentation. Flavored malt beverages (FMBs) are not considered beers.
The Brewers Association has on its CraftBeer.com web site a tool for finding craft brewers nearby. I tried the CraftBeer.com search tool for breweries near me. Included in the list that came up were Widmer Brothers in Portland and 10Barrel Brewing in Bend. Both had the notation “Greater than 25% ownership by Anheuser-Busch InBev.” (32% of Widmer and 100% of 10 Barrel)
This poster highlighting brewery ownership is from themadfermentationist.com. An ever-changing list is at craftbeerjoe.com.
That consumer hatred is turning to gold for Joe Bingochea, president of Channel Master.
Consumer Reports
published an item about a lawsuit Comcast settled recently with the
Massachusetts attorney general. The cable provider agreed to refund $700,000 in
overcharges and cancel debts of 20,000 customers. It seems Comcast’s
advertising neglected to disclose fees that typically increased the price of
multi-year packages by 40%. Unhappy customers were required to pay as much as
$240 to cancel or change a subscription.
An estimated 25 million subscribers broke free from their pay-tv
service this year, a 33% increase over 2017.
Who doesn’t hate their cable or satellite television
provider? The cable and satellite companies force customers to pay for unwanted
channels to get the channels they do want. Because they sold only package deals.
The television providers refused to remove their blinders; they thought they
could resist a la carte pricing forever. Although they also provide Internet
service – and lobby against net neutrality – they didn’t see the Internet would
soon wreck their business model.
That consumer hatred is turning to gold for Joe Bingochea, president of Channel Master. The seventy-year-old company has doubled the size of its Arizona factory to meet surging demand. Its product? Television antennas.
Internet
television allows viewers to subscribe to only channels they want. They don’t need
to pay for ESPN2 to get HBO; they only pay for the HBO channel. And they’ve
learned what mom and dad knew: the local stations, including major network
affiliates and PBS, broadcast their programming for free. All one needs is an
antenna to grab the signal from the atmosphere.
Which explains why Joe Bingochea is so happy. After years in the doldrums, his company’s products are in demand again. Channel Master also offers DVRs that work with antennas, because today’s viewers are accustomed to watching what they want when they want. For less than a hundred bucks, a person can become an ex-customer of the pay-TV companies.
“Trump is not much different than most of the NY real estate developers. Obnoxious, liar, screws people, impossible to trust, etc.”
If your brain can handle more background on the perpetrator of multiple business failures who occasionally spends time in the Oval Office, Foreign Policy magazine – not known as a left-wing propaganda organ – has published a well-researched and dispassionate overview of business dealings with Russia.
A
couple fun quotes:
“I
think part of it was he was toxic to the banks. I think he also probably
learned that personal guarantees [on loans] weren’t a brilliant idea either. So
he was saying to himself, ‘What else could I do in the world? I’ll just
convince people to buy my brand.’ And the only people who were willing to buy
it were tasteless Russians, people who like the absurd, ostentatious gold-leaf
lifestyle he has.”
– former business associate
“Trump
is not much different than most of the NY real estate developers. Obnoxious,
liar, screws people, impossible to trust, etc, but in NY real estate–not
unusual. None of any of that is proof of anything other than Trump was
considered a bad guy who nobody trusted to do business with in the US banking
world. That is far from any proof he did anything wrong as to collusion which
there was none.”
