Short’s Brewing sells 20% to Heineken/Lagunita’s

Sad day for Michigan beer....although we all saw it coming: http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/07/shorts_brewing_announces_partn.html

No surprises here. Joe also said he’d never distribute outside of Michigan, but that proved to be false as well. Money talks, and apparently you can never have enough of it. Oh well; at least he didn’t sell the minority stake to AB-InBev.

Bravo to them! A healthy forest includes many sizes and scales of life, big and small.

Consumer choice in Michigan is better than it has ever been in the state’s history and Short’s may soon be available to a broader market.

The myth of limiting consumer choice is primarily propagated by large, national or international craft breweries who are operating extra-regionally. These brewers are perceived in new markets as big and invasive, so they’re using attacks on big beer to improve consumer association of their brand with small craft and change their brand perception from large, invasive, and non-local. These stories aren’t coming from breweries that have won capital and distribution backing through relationships with larger beer companies.

Most small brewers are aware of the pervasiveness of the fear myth. Most of their competition for resources, shelf space and tap handles comes from other small brands and from larger international craft brands. Most educated consumers also know this, but the disinformation campaign is coming from a few powerful sources including trade groups that draw support from large craft. If this myth were true, and big beer has great power to limit consumer choice, why would we now be in the height of the golden age of craft beer?

Company mergers allow big business to control more of the market. It’s not a myth. It’s economics.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/opinion/sunday/how-mergers-damage-the-economy.html

I won’t get into the morality of it all, but I don’t see how this benefits "craft beer". It seems counterintuitive.

I think a lot of the local backlash will come from the ethos of Short’s Brewing only 2 years ago, "Michigan Only, Michigan Forever".

They expanded production and did not hit their numbers. Large in part to the wide-range of choices on the shelf here in Michigan. So, to help cover that expansion cost, they expanded distribution.

People were already upset that they got the cart in front of the horse, so to speak...and had to move to regional distribution.

This rumor was pretty hot and heavy this Spring, and something that Joe (for legal reasons, I’m sure) had to deny at their Anniversary Party back in April.

So, while it’s not a surprise to anybody that has followed Short’s in the past 2 years, it was sad to see their ethos go out the window.

You looken sharpen todayen, mein herr.

Originally posted by Clownoisseur
Company mergers allow big business to control more of the market. It’s not a myth. It’s economics.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/opinion/sunday/how-mergers-damage-the-economy.html

I won’t get into the morality of it all, but I don’t see how this benefits "craft beer". It seems counterintuitive.

Originally posted by joet

Originally posted by Clownoisseur
Company mergers allow big business to control more of the market. It’s not a myth. It’s economics.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/opinion/sunday/how-mergers-damage-the-economy.html

I won’t get into the morality of it all, but I don’t see how this benefits "craft beer". It seems counterintuitive.

I’m not saying that mergers don’t have a market effect, but the idea that the market effect is very significant or dominant in terms of either consumer choice or the hierarchy of business challenges to small craft is verifiably false. Maybe this kind of now quixotic campaign made sense in 1998 or 2002 but it’s very obviously not true now.

Everyone knows 20% is a minority share, right? In any event, i am not aware of Heineken engaging in unethical and possibly illegal practices like Budweiser, targeted against craft beer, and I am confident in saying the majority of beer drinkers consider Heineken a premium brand.

I’m curious why this is being positioned this way.

Heineken Owns Lagunitas...100%, right?

Lagunitas is buying 20% of Short’s Brewing.

So a subsidiary of Heineken owns some of short’s but not heinekn? Is this just a PR thing "craft beer buys craft beer" or is it some tax / antitrust thing to have a subsidiary invest instead of the multinational?

I"m just curious why it was done this way and not just Heineken investing.

Heineken bought the remaining stake this past Spring, so that "Lagunitas IPA can become the Heineken of craft"

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/business/6958589-181/heineken-buys-the-remaining-50?artslide=0