KeepClimbingDick

WSJ article:Bud Crowded Out By Craft Beer Craze

http://online.wsj.com/articles/budwe...&mg=reno64-wsj

Interesting statistics and demographics. It's obvious the core market of the Budweiser brand is not the same as the Sky Club target. It seems that Delta continues to struggle executing a clear, consistent marketing strategy-- in this case, a product offering not matched to Sky Club demographics as well as mixed messages around luxury and exclusiveness (not news).

MS02113

What is Sky Club's target demographic? I highly doubt it's the craft-beer-drinking 22-to-27-year-olds that Budweiser's failing to reach. I'd welcome better house beers in the lounges as much as the next guy, but I fail to see the Delta-Budweiser connection you're trying to make.

tkey75

Once upon a time, the SC's had a good to fantastic beer selection. Thanks for the memories, SLC. We all long for the good times to return. Not holding my breath.

StayingHomeIsBetter

Well, this 63 year-old craft beer seeker, when viewing the taps in the Sky Club, is reminded of the marketing slogan for Olde Frothingslosh..."the Pale Stale Ale--so light the foam is on the bottom.”



BTW... I suspect that you are going to find a higher percentage of craft brew drinkers in the 45 to 65 age group (who can afford $12 to $15 for a 4-pack) than you are going to find in the younger demograhics... which, for incomprehensible reasons, have turned PBR into the fashionable beer to drink.

zippy the pinhead

There are more than a few craft beers owned/sold by AB/InBev. And that sort of thing has been going on for a while. In the beer business, a licensed brewer can sell directly to customers only when filling growlers at the brewery. Any other sale requires a distributor, and that is where AB/InBev has it covered.

motytrah

There are plenty of craft brewers that run canning operations and have distribution. It's not like it's hard to load local beers into the catering cart. NW did it before the merger and other airlines continue to have localized selections. Be that as it may, I think cost is overriding everything else.

FlyingUnderTheRadar

That is not correct. Perhaps in some states but not all. Oddly enough in Oootah the local brewers are allowed to do their own distribution to stores and other places. The big distributors hate this aspect of the law. Further, I can go down to the brewery to buy not only growlers but also beer in bottles including big alcohol beers that are normally only sold in the state store. So it really varies state by state.

Regarding beer in the sky clubs I typically expect to see a mix of beers from Coors/Bud to Microbrews.

3Cforme

http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/b...in-the-us.html

Bud #3, Coors Light #2, and Bud Light #1 as the best-selling beers in the U.S. aren't going to gain much credibility among craft beer drinkers but flyers and beer drinkers go into a SkyClub expecting to find what's popular.

Another way to look at the WSJ data is that Bud nearly outsells all craft beers combined.

What's clear is the level of pretentiousness to which some will rise and their ill-argued sentiments against everything Delta that find their way into this forum.

Pretzelsandpeanuts

I for one like Miller Lite, so I am happy that most clubs seem to have that on tap.

StayingHomeIsBetter

And, some of us who have enjoyed Goose Island (for example) over the years are anxiously fearful of seeing rice appear on the grain bill for what have been, up to now, very good beers.

It remains to be seen whether "multinational craft brewing" is an oxymoron.

bennos

While I agree with your statement about the popularity of those beers, I disagree with your conclusion.

Delta has been making a concerted effort to appeal to a certain consumer segment via a specific image, which you can see in examples such as partnering with hospitality-focused Danny Meyer to bring improved food experiences to JFK T4. In this example, when Shake Shack discusses beer, they're talking about Brooklyn Brewery, not Bud.

The bottom shelf beer offerings in the SkyClubs runs completely counter to this image. It is a move best understood by realizing that the SkyClubs used to have significantly better complimentary beer selections -- ie: it was a cost cutting move, and one inconsistent with the overall marketing image that Delta is trying to achieve.

Mendobrew

Beer Karma is an interesting thing….

In the early years of the Craft Brewing Industry, AB thought of us (Craft/Micro Breweries) as pests who were just taking a couple of percentage points off their sales numbers, and we would eventually and certainly fade away… But we stuck around and AB decreed that none of its distributors could carry any beers not made by AB. That made distribution a bit tougher in the start. Luckily the Coors and Miller Distributors saw the desire for the products, and the money to be made. Even the largest liquor distributor in the US (Southern Wine and Spirits) started a carrying micros; and even carried draft products for a few years in the mid 90’s.
The micro boom was starting to gain momentum without and in spite of AB.

The good old boys in St. Louis finally started seeing the lost revenue and were getting too much heat (and a few threats) from its distributors, so they went out and bought a couple of “them trendy microbreweries” : Red Hook and Widmer Brothers. Two extreme examples of the craft (at that time). The decree went out to the distributors that they could now carry Craft/Micro products; but only AB owned ones, Red Hook and Widmer…
That kept the distributors happy for a couple of years, but the market was exploding and the war for shelf space had been lost. Import and Craft beers started getting the majority of beer shelf space in supermarkets and other stores around 2000. Distributors were screaming and several told AB that they needed the micros to survive. The war against the little guys was lost, Craft beer was here to stay.

I had a good laugh the day that AB sold out to InBev… I just had another good laugh when I read the WSJ piece...

Cheers!

StayingHomeIsBetter

The concepts of luxury and exclusiveness only exist in the advertising copy... there has been no physical parallel in the Sky Club reality for quite some time now.

There is nothing wrong with making pale, rice-based lagers available for those folks easily swayed by massive marketing campaigns. But, your straw man argument appears to be that there need not be alternatives for those whose tastes go in a different direction.

The former system where each club could provide a complementary, locally-sourced beer emblematic of their area, side-by-side with the industrial offerings, was a very good compromise. It worked quite well up until Va Ave started squeezing pennies so hard that you could hear Lincoln groan.

Now, the best that DL can offer someone on a $10,000 business class ticket flying through Detroit is Bud and Miller Lite. As KeepClimbingDick suggests, this is just not in keeping with the image that Va Ave seems to want to project.

As to pretentiousness, it's curious that your pretensionometer selectively avoids your friends who assert that FC is being ruined by UG detritus.

"Ill-argued sentiments" appear to be limited to, and defined by, sentiments with which you disagree.

StayingHomeIsBetter

It sounds like you are a craft-brewing insider.

If so, thank you for contributing to the diverse spectrum of alternatives that we have to choose from (outside of Sky Clubs, that is).

I am quite content with the concept of making love to the same person for the rest of my life. But I cannot envision popping the cap on the same industrial mass-produced beer that I had the time before... and the time before... and the time before... and the time before...

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with that. After all, there are probably some folks who have watched the movie "Back to the Future" 30 or 40 times.

iwascool

Agreed.

I am sure that Delta invested significant hours to determine what beer is best served with Corn Salad.