Brewing Up New Business

What lives in an Eastern or Mid-western city, ranges in age from 21 to 40, earns about $7,500 a year and is thirstier than a Bavarian immigrant? Answer: the typical U.S. beer drinker. Beer production in the U.S. last year reached 98.5 million barrels, or 27 gallons for every adult. No less than 75% of this sea of suds, however, was downed by those 21-to-40 urbanites, who constitute only 20% of the population. Since the group's size is due to increase 11% by 1970 and another 37% by 1980, even higher beer sales foam ahead. To capture the rising market for particular brands, the once conservative beer industry is off on the greatest binge of competition since Prohibition ended.

Last week Anheuser-Busch, the biggest U.S. beermaker, announced that it will build a sixth plant in Columbus, Ohio (it is still building a fifth in Houston), added that its output this year will reach 12.2 million barrels v. 10.4 million last year because Busch brands (Budweiser, Michelob, Busch-Bavarian) have captured another 1% of the market. At the same time, Falstaff Brewing Corp., Busch's St. Louis neighbor and the fourth-ranking beer company, bought Narragansett Brewing Co., New England's largest brewery, for $19.5 million.

Athletes & Ads. Both announcements are part of an industry trend. The U.S. is drinking twice as much beer per capita as it did immediately after Prohibition--production this year will reach a record 102 million barrels--but only a quarter as many breweries are making it. In 1934 there were 752; today only 190 breweries are in business, and many of them have a future about as flat as stale beer. The ten biggest brewers account for 55% of sales, and another 30% belongs to such strong and modern regional brewers as National of Baltimore, Pearl of San Antonio, Schmidt of Philadelphia and Olympia of Washington State. The big marketing battle is between the regionals and the nationals that have set up regional plants to compete with them, such as Budweiser, Schlitz, Pabst, Falstaff and Carling. The smaller breweries are caught between the two; imported beers, which account for only .7% of the market, hardly figure in the battle.

The beermakers are fighting each other along both marketing and technological lines. Since sport is the biggest area of beer advertising and promotion, more brewers are buying into professional teams. Struggling Jacob Ruppert Brewing Co., whose founder was the original owner of the New York Yankees, last week purchased the championship Boston Celtics basketball team, and earlier this month National Beer became majority stockholder in the Baltimore Orioles. Budweiser owns St. Louis' baseball Cardinals and Falstaff owns part of the football Cardinals. In addition, many beermen are seeking more effective ad campaigns by shuffling agencies; in one of the best campaigns, Rheingold and Doyle Dane Bernbach now appeal directly to New York's ethnic melting pot ("In New York City, where there are more Irishmen than in Dublin, more people drink Rheingold . . .").

Concentrated Beer. Impressed by the success of the flip-top cap, brewers are searching for other package improvements. Schlitz last week introduced an improved flip-top whose blunt edges are guaranteed not to slice hands, as earlier models often did. Anheuser-Busch also announced that it is shifting to aluminum cans from tin-plate, even though brewers admit privately that any kind of can is a poor container for retaining beer flavor. Because 50% of all beer is now sold in supermarkets, beer companies are designing packages that will stand out on store shelves, catch the eye of housewives who do the beer-buying for their husbands.

Back at the brewery, other changes are under way. Some beermen are testing small aluminum kegs that provide draught beer for home refrigerators and could revive the draught-beer market, which has slumped from 75% to 18% of total consumption. After much delay, Carling last month started a continuous brewing plant at Fort Worth that makes beer by assembly-line process instead of in single vats; other beer executives are watching to see if the process accounts for sizable labor saving. Coors Co. of Colorado is developing a vertical process in which it grows its own grain, makes its own cans and adds the beer on a fast production line. Another new possibility being studied: concentrated beer. Concentrates could be brewed in a central plant, shipped at much lower transportation cost to branches for reconstitution with water.

In the new competition, even the beer itself is changing. Once, as the industry saying goes, brewmasters worked with "one hand on the vat and one hand on God," gave little thought to customer tastes. Now many customers want lighter beers like the "champagne of bottled beer" pioneered by Miller of Milwaukee, and brewmasters (who prefer heavier beer) are changing the proportion of malt, hops, rice and corn grits to provide it. One holdout is New York's F. & M. Schaefer Brewing Co. "We're willing to forsake all those people who drink a can of beer once every two weeks," says Market Development Manager Edmund E. Kelly. Schaefer still brews for the 20% who drink 75% of the suds and enjoy it, the brewers suspect, for lustier reasons than lightness.

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