Euge - I meant anywhere in MO with a retail license can very easily get a license to sell liquor as well. Usually it’s just convenience stores that bother with them, but there’s no reason I couldn’t get a liquor license for my tackle store. In fact I’ve thought about doing that, and tackle stores in other areas do just that. What that means is that every convenience and grocery store in the state sells beer, wine, and liquor of all strengths.
In CO independent liquor stores collectively have a monopoly on liquor and wine, and all beer over 3.2%ABW. Every few years someone tries to repeal that law. I’ve seen estimates that if grocery and convenience stores can sell full-strength beer and wine it would put about half the independent stores out of business basically immediately, and probably put another 1/4 out of business over the next few years.
The problem with Kroger or Target selling booze is that while it’d be really convenient and cheaper for customers, it’d be really bad news for microbreweries. If you’re a brewery, and sell to Kroger in CO, you have to sell to all the Krogers in the district. It’d force moderately large microbreweries to use all their production capacity on their best selling beer, and the lack of independent liquor stores would put a lot of the smaller breweries out of business.
So you could look at CO’s laws as either protecting an effective monopoly by small-businesses, or protecting independent stores from competition with national chains. I’m pro-small-business and pro-craft beer, so it never really bothered me. But I can see how a lot of people would have problems with that kind of anti-free-market protectionism. If you like BMC, you’d probably feel the same way about the anti-free-market protectionism that they’re afforded.
But yeah, there’s a lot of cronyism in politics in both states. Gov./former mayor of Denver Hickenlooper was an owner of Wynkoop Brewing Co, one of the oldest microbreweries in CO. In MO, and St. Louis specifically, A-B is a really big deal. I voted for Hickenlooper, so I guess cronyism doesn’t bother me when it’s cronyism to support things I like.
Wow. If I read that correctly you basically have to have the production to supply all the various retailers or not be able to operate at all. AB as the #1 producer feels no fear from that aspect…
Yeah, that’s about it. In CO you can own a microbrewery and sell a single six pack to Ted’s Liquor Store. In MO you have to sell to a third-party distributor (depending on how you set up your licenses, that either can or cannot be owned by yourself), and that distributor sells to Brown Derby (liquor chain) or Walmart, which wants enough product to stock all of their stores in the region.
There are a few independent liquor stores around, but I don’t shop there because they only stock BMC. Walmart has one of the best selections around here, which is really sad.
Ah but the real question is how many beers per person were produced. I’d bet AB alone produces more per person than the entire country did back then. Two completely different worlds we’re talking about.
Not quite, but you’re close. Total US production in 1890 was 27.9m bbl, 13.6 gallons per capita. A-B production alone in 2000 was 99.2m bbl, which was 10.85 gallons per capita.
What I find interesting about that graph is that prohibition did nothing to the level of drinking in america. the gap represented by prohibition could be replaced with a simple continuation of the line and nothing would change. the numbers were trending down already.
Except that the graph is number of breweries, not alcohol consumed.
What prohibition likely did was hasten the consolidation of the industry into fewer larger breweries, though of course that’s not supported by the graph, as you point out. Pure speculation on my part.
True. Your statement is more acurate, so prohibition, contrary to what might seem logical did NOT hasten the consolidation of breweries. At least according to that graph.
One of the things I recall reading, though I don’t have a reference for it, was that one of the Milwaukee breweries began shipping beer in cooled/chilled box cars and that this helped them to dominate as they could deliver a superior product.
No other goods or services have been prohibited in the past, and consolidation has been widespread anyway. I don’t think prohibition had anything to do with it.
Between 1930 and 1980, draft sales decreased linearly from 70% to 12%. If everyone started buying beer in cans or bottles, companies with the most capital would be best positioned to dominate the market, through better margins, better QC, bigger distribution networks, and more volume. Selling beer in-house, on draft, is more profitable for small breweries, but selling beer in cans in huge volume is more profitable for big breweries.
I blame refrigerators for destroying the craft beer industry in the first place.
My take from Ambitious Brew was that prohibition made it possible to put in a lot of new restrictions on alcohol, since most players would accept anything to get it repealed. The 3-tier system, taxes, etc then went on to encourage consolidation after prohibition ended because the largest players could deal with the restrictions more efficiently.
Good point though, that all markets had undergone similar consolidation. And brewery consolidation has taken place in European countries as well.
Also breweries were consolidating before prohibition as breweries failed due to the public’s change in taste for beer. Prohibition eliminated (or severely damaged) the breweries that could not survive off investments or ones that could not sell other products like near beer, yeast, malt extracts, soda, etc. Bigger breweries had a better chance to adapt to survive, and the ones that did had a huge advantage when prohibition ended.
Before prohibition, most breweries distributed their beer locally or through saloons. Saloons became one of the main targets of prohibition. Anheuser-Busch was the company that specially designed refrigerated box cars to transport their beer all over the country. The big brewers were able to take advantage of improved packaging(better bottles and canned beer) and refrigerated box cars to dominate the beer industry. You can really blame prohibition and refrigeration/improved packaging equally for destroying the number of small breweries.
Ambitious Brew was a pretty good book, but a little too pro big-brewers.
