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This week in 2003, a deal logjam broke as Coors distrib Maloof & Co (then owned by Maloof family which also then owned NBA's Sacramento Kings, Vegas casinos, etc) agreed to buy 4.2-mil-case Miller distrib New Mexico Bev Co (owned by Tom Bonafair). "New entity would be ~9 mil cases, continuing Southwestern major metro trend: Dallas, Orange County, Albuquerque and Phoenix had all consolidated Miller/Coors distribs in last 2 yrs," noted INSIGHTS. The Maloofs sold their beer distribution biz in 2009 to Admiral Bevs (Kelly Clay) in 2009. This week in 2004, INSIGHTS reported that City Beverages LLC paid AB approx $15.7 mil for "distribution rights and related assets" for National Dist, almost 4 mil cases. AB had also "acquired the right to purchase" smaller distribs in Tacoma and Aberdeen, and "transferred those rights to City Beverages." Steve Knight was "majority owner" of City Bevs. Previously, AB said it had gained $6 mil from sale of distrib assets in Washington in 4th qtr. Turned out too that City Bevs bought $23.4 mil of beer from AB in '03, up nearly $6 mil from '02. Steve is son of Chuck Knight, then on AB board of directors, noted INSIGHTS. City is now known as Olympic Eagle.This week in 2010, INSIGHTS cited a Bloomberg report that showed the top 4 brewers "now control more than half the global beer market after two years of more than $75 billion of acquisitions." That was ABI, SABMiller, Heineken and Carlsberg. Carlsberg was the least active, with "limited flexibility in its balance sheet&hellip; and it lacks the scale to compete for major transactions with the larger multinationals," said Alex Oldroyd at Barclay's Capital. Carlsberg ceo at the time Jorgen Buhl Rasmussen put it differently: "To me, it's less about being number four or number two on a global scale- it's more important to have scale where we choose to be," he told Bloomberg. "Very big serious acquisitions are not really what we have on our mind right now." Carlsberg made about 45% of its earnings in Russia in 2009. It sold its Russian biz for $322 mil in late 2024, following a near 3-yr sale process.This week in 2013, Krey Dist, owned by Steven Busch (son of former AB chairman August III) was paring his craft portfolio and making waves locally. Krey dropped 6 craft brewers, mostly small local ones like Perennial Artisan Ales, 2d Shift, Ferguson and Morgan Street. "Our market is not as craft-developed as St Louis County or city," Steven told St Lou Post Dispatch. "We managed to get a few placements with those brands and some we got no placements at all. We figured it was probably better to let some of those go and focus on our core Anheuser Busch brands." But "before anyone can say 'son of 100% share of mind,' take a gander at all the strong craft brands Krey kept: regional players like Abita, Deschutes, Green Flash and Southern Tier as well as fast-growing local brewers [at the time] O'Fallon, Six Row and Urban Chestnut," wrote INSIGHTS. (After more recent struggles, Urban Chestnut and O'Fallon are now collectively owned by Keg Holdings LLC.)The abandoned craft brewers cried foul to Post Dispatch. "It always seemed like they really didn't want to put (our beer) in anywhere, even though bars were asking for us," said Ferguson's head brewer. A retailer even complained he couldn't get delivery of brands he ordered. And it was also true that ABI was trying to keep its distribs too busy to handle a plethora of craft brands with its own dizzying array of new brands/ packages. Still, to INSIGHTS it looked more like Steven was an early adopter of tough decisions many distribs faced with increasingly perplexing problem of portfolio mgt.This week in 2016, one of most popular beer ad spokesmen of last decade was leaving the room, and the planet. Jonathan Goldsmith, central character for Dos Equis' "Most Interesting Man" campaign, made his final appearance in an ad that showed him walking through a crowd of international well-wishers as he approached a rocket to take him on a "one way" journey to Mars. After that, the campaign was going to be "revamped" for the current generation of drinkers, Heineken told USA Today. "Culture has changed very dramatically" since Most Interesting Man came on scene in 2007, HUSA mktg veep for Dos Equis Andrew Katz told the paper. "Our millennial drinker has changed quite dramatically, and the competition has only exploded with the advent of craft [beer]. We just want to make sure that the [Most Interesting Man] story evolves." Dos Equis volume had nearly tripled since 2007 when campaign debuted regionally. As INSIGHTS reported in Jan, HUSA brought the MIM back a decade later.

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