Family-Owned Yuengling Wants Its 'Fair Share of the Bud Light Debacle'
CLARIFICATION, Oct. 17, 2023: Bud Light is a brand of the Belgian conglomerate Anheuser-Busch InBev. An earlier version of this article suggested otherwise.
The oldest brewery in the country is going up against the largest brewing company in the world as the industry attempts to resolve the chaos that has followed Bud Light’s disastrous marketing this year.
“We are the little guy on the block so we have to fight harder,” Dick Yuengling, owner and CEO of DG Yuengling & Son, told the New York Post, “but how do we grow if they don’t give us more shelf space?”
Yuengling, the fifth-generation owner of the company, said demand for his beer had never been higher as American consumers turned away from Bud Light, but that bigger conglomerates — led by Anheuser-Busch InBev, the Belgium-based corporation that makes Bud Light — were working hard to take over shelf space no longer dedicated to the famous blue bottles and cans.
“We just want our fair share of the Bud Light debacle,” Yuengling told the Post.
According to data from Bump Williams Consulting and NielsenIQ cited by the Post, Yuengling has become the country’s fourth-fastest-growing beer brand.
“Yuengling is largely out of stock in the markets it’s available in and deserves more distribution and shelf space because consumer demand is higher today than what retailers have given them,” consulting firm CEO Bump Williams told the outlet.
In states where Yuengling is available, sales were up 22 percent for the year so far, and sales of it’s best seller, Yuengling Lager, were up 80 percent in a recent four-week period when compared to the same four weeks in 2022.
But, the Post said, the brand’s amazing growth has “lately hit a wall.”
Yuengling Chief Operating Officer David Casinelli told the Post that that was due to bigger corporations like Anheuser-Busch using their size and resources to prevail in what Casinelli called a “very aggressive selling environment.”
“Within the letter of the law, I think they are using all of their resources, rebating, discounts — they are the largest brewer in the world,” Casinelli said.
“They are advertising, doing marketing consumer research,” he added. “If there’s anything beyond that, I wouldn’t know.”
“If we go into next year and nothing changes on the shelf, then you scratch your head and wonder what’s going on,” Casinelli said. “We know [Anheuser-Busch] is not going to make it easy for anyone else.”
Anheuser-Busch did not respond when the Post reached out to it for comment.
“The big [breweries] get the most space in stores,” Casinelli said. “We are all fighting to see what we can get and Bud Light is not exactly rolling over and saying ‘sure take our space.’ They are doing everything in their power to hold onto their shelf space.”
Ultimately, the allocation of shelf space is out of Yuengling’s hands; retailers have the final say, of course, in what’s going to be displayed in their stores.
But even Yuengling’s own distributors are making things more challenging for the 194-year-old company, Yuengling said, suggesting a $1.36 price increase per case to the company — about a 6 percent jump.
“Every time you raise prices people switch brands,” Yuengling told the Post. “We are voicing our displeasure.”
He acknowledged, however, that the distributors would probably do whatever they wanted in the end.
“When you sign on with a distributor, he owns your brands and there are only two distributors in most markets,” he said.
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