'Beverages' Archive
It’s an exotic herb. It grows in South America, Central America, Mexico, and Asia. Native peoples from these regions have used it as a nostrum for centuries to treat all manner of conditions. Its scientific name, Stevia rebaudiana, is impressive, and it’s been the subject of scientific investigation for years. Sounds like a cure for cancer or a drug to treat dementia, maybe a possible drug to prevent aids? Nope, it’s nothing as humanitarian as that. Stevia, you see, is easy to cultivate, the extract made from its leaves is 300 times sweeter than refined sugar, and it contains no calories.
No war on cancer here. It’s Coke and Pepsi. They’re at it again. You see, soda sales are down. Ah, but obesity rates are up. What each of the two giant beverage companies want and need is a block-buster diet soda. Enter Coke, which, with the help of agricultural wizard Cargill, has refined the heck out of stevia, to eliminate its licorice-like aftertaste, and come up with Truvia, the uber sweetener.
Not far behind, Pepsi and its ingredient buddy, Merisant, have been test-tubing themselves and now have their own tincture of stevia, which they call PureVia. Yep, our two ever-warring beverage makers are looking for the Holy Grail, a No-Cal Soda Sale.
However, there is a third party involved in this no-love-lost triangle — that regulation-wielding hussy, the FDA, which forbids the use of stevia in food products. (Little Miss FDA is not as pure as the driven snow in this triangle; the agency does allow stevia to be sold as a food supplement. That is, it can be and is sold in powdered and liquid form and is usually available at natural and health food outlets and pharmacies.)
Coke and Pepsi have sponsored their own tests, which, as could be expected, found no harmful effects from the use of their versions of stevia. The companies are waiting for the FDA to allow its use in foods.
Past studies have suggested that stevia might interfere with reproduction, as well as possibly being mutagenic and/or carcinogenic. A just-released independent study, conducted at the University of California (which has no ties to any stevia product) suggests that the sweetener might cause chromosomal damage and DNA breakage.
Testing on humans being unethical, FDA guidelines advise potential food additives be tested on two rodent species, usually rats and mice. So far, tests have only been conducted on rats. And while a safe, natural, non-caloric sweetener would be a good thing for our expanding waistlines (as well as for Coke and Pepsi coffers), the FDA should not allow stevia, in any of its iterations, to enter the food chain until further studies establish that it is safe.
Wanna be one of the guys? Belly up to the bar? Patronize your local pub? Coors is courting the ladies. Yep, despite women’s sadly inadequate belching talents and less rabid devotion to football (American-style, or soccer, if you live on the other side of the Atlantic) as their gender counterparts, Coors, among others, is aiming at the ladies.
Coors is not the first brewer to hit upon this supposedly obvious idea to ramp up sales — after all, women are half the population. Interbrew (the Belgian brewery that merged with Brazil’s AmBev in 2004 to become InBev) tried a cherry-flavored concoction called Kreik. Launched in 2004, it was a disaster. Then there are all the craft brewers, whose seasonal beers are often made using the literal fruits of the harvest, who encourage the ladies to tip a few. UK-based Diageo is pushing its Guinness Red by advertising it as (listen up, women) tasting sweeter and smelling less strong than its traditional Guinness.
Trouble is, brewers never quite know how to market the stuff. Do they go with the line that women want to join men in their appreciation of the foam-laden amber liquid (but then, why make separate products?); or do they, as they are trying this time around, offer a “special brew just for you,” which runs the risk of making the companies look like they’re patronizing women? After all, today’s women are the daughters and granddaughters of Rosie, the Riveter, in the workforce in ever greater numbers; they make up more than half the enrollment in medical and law schools; they buy their own automobiles and houses; they even play professional football. Who says women need frilly (dare I say it?) paper-parasol-embellished beers?
Let us digress a moment to speak to women and beer. A few telling facts: 4,000 years ago, the master brewers in Mesopotamia were women. They had a beer goddess. In ancient Babylon, the brewers were designated as priestesses. Zip up a little closer in time to today and we see that until the end of the 1700s, nearly every cottage in the English countryside brewed its own beer. The brewers? The women of the cottages (thus, the term “ale wives”). Eventually, the best of these cottage/home brewery operations became “public houses” or pubs. When traveling through her realm, Queen Elizabeth I sent couriers ahead to taste the local ale. If it wasn’t up to Lizzie’s standards, a shipment of a more pleasing-to-the royal-pallet libation was sent out to her from London.
But let us step out of the Wayback Machine and return to 2008. Beer sales in the UK are sagging (they fell 4.5 % in the second quarter). In the US, they have increased some of late (up 1.9% in the first half as compared to the first half of last year). But 1.9% isn’t enough to make brewers dance atop their oasts.
Coors has just this year created an operation (code-named Eve) devoted exclusively to the development of beer brands and marketing techniques that appeal to women. Not quite ready with an actual product yet, Coors has begun encouraging pub owners to push its new-to-the-UK-market Blue Moon product “with touches like serving it with an orange slice to accentuate its fruity taste.” Some pubs are coating the orange slices with brown sugar. (It’s enough to rouse the envy of Martha Stewart, these chi-chi touches.)
Back in the good old USA, MillerCoors (a joint venture between UK-based SABMiller and Molson Coors), has come up with MGD 64, the lowest calorie beer ever made for the US market, at 64 calories per 12-ounce serving. (By comparison its standard Miller Genuine Draft has 143 calories per 12-ounce serving.) And we all know, don’t we ladies, that beer is more fattening. (Remember low-carb beer?)
To further its push to females, MGD 64 is being promoted in Seattle and Portland via a clothes-hanger campaign. Dry cleaners in those cities will distribute hangers with an attached message that touts the beer’s 64 calories as “a perfect fit” in order to “exclusively reach adult female consumers in the privacy of their homes.” Why Seattle and Portland women are the lucky recipients of these ad-festooned hangers is not clear. Suffice it to say, it (and the whole clothes-hanger idea) was some enthusiastic marketing decision.
If the coat hangers — I’m not even going near the Mommie Dearest associations — and Coors’ Eve unit (described as “designed to create a world where women love beer as much as they love shoes”) are examples of modern, enlightened, and revenue-enhancing thought, then the boys in the executive suites have no clue beer-wise, regarding a salable answer to Freud’s question, “What do women want?”
Freud, by the way, had no decent answers either.
Do you suppose August Busch IV will be pulling up a stool with the other CEOs/chairpersons/heirs-to-the-family-fortune at an imaginary get-together in a dusty old corner tavern to drink to their multi-billion-dollar deals? Will he join these other recent sellers of giant companies and drink to the money they’ve made? Will Busch IV and the others also drink to the demise of the American family business dynasty? They probably should, at least to the former.
Here’s a short round-up of recent dynasty-related acquisitions: Wrigley sold its iconic gum company to candy company Mars; the Bancrofts sold Dow Jones (and with it, The Wall Street Journal) to Rupert Murdoch; and Carlsberg and Heineken have just taken over, dismantled, and divvied up the UK’s oldest brewer, Scottish & Newcastle. The beer arena has examples of other takeovers of family-owned and -run companies as well: South Africa’s SABMiller snagged Milwaukee’s finest, Miller Brewing, and Canada’s Molson bought out that mellow Denver brew, Coors (creating the not very creatively named Molson Coors Brewing Company). There are others but you get the drift — consolidation is all, especially in the beer market.
To this end, it sure looks like little Auggie Busch will be joining our group of seller (sell-outs?) for a drink. Rumors, reports, and Reuters are rife with talk about the sale of Anheuser-Bush to InBev. InBev? What’s that? Not a household name in this country (yet), InBev is a large Belgium brewer with operations in some 30 countries. It produces and markets some 200 beers throughout the world and makes some pretty well known quaffs you’ve probably quaffed — Beck’s, Stella Artois, Brahma, and Labatt, to name a few.
[Reader note: Instead of using past perfect, pluperfect, and other awkward tenses, let us assume this is a done deal, thus freeing us to use and read less convoluted verbal constructs: So, instead of, "August Busch IV is said to have rejected," let us say instead, "August Busch IV has so far rejected ..."]
As of this writing Busch IV has rejected InBev’s $46 billion offer to buy out his family’s legacy. Ever mindful of his father (Busch III) and all the Bs before him, not to mention his hometown of St. Louis, and perhaps even his company as an edifying example of the American Dream, Bush IV and A-B itself remain silent on any deal. InBev officially remains silent as well.
But $46 billion. It is a sum not to be sneezed at. Just what would Anheuser get for this tidy sum? Well, considering the flat sales in the mature US beer market, A-B would leverage InBev’s global and emerging market platforms, as well as its manufacturing, cost-saving, and scalability synergies. In short, A-B would probably see an increase in its bottom line.
And InBev — again, given the sluggish US beer market — what would it get? Given that some of its most successful operations are in Canada and South and Central America (through its Brazil-headquartered AmBev subsidiary), the company badly wants into the US market. What better way than to acquire Anheuser-Bush’s well established distribution system? InBev could market its more upscale beers in the US and do the same with Budweiser in its emerging (and already-emerged) markets.
It sounds like a pretty good deal all around. But the thought arises — will the Clydesdales now be draped in the black, red, and gold of the Belgian flag? I don’t even want to contemplate the Super Bowl ads.