Bud, Coors Throw Pumpkins at Craft Brewers
DENVER (
) -- In autumn, the barroom brawl between
Anheuser-Busch Inbev
(BUD) - Get Report
and
Molson Coors
(TAP) - Get Report
moves to the pumpkin patch.
At liquor stores throughout the country, Jack's Pumpkin Spice Ale from Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors' Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale compete with craft brews like Shipyard Brewing Company's Pumpkinhead Ale and Dogfish Head Brewery's Punkin Ale. Why are these beer heavyweights taking on the cramped world of pumpkin ale?
Todd Alstrom, co-owner of beer publication
BeerAdvocate
, says Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors are trying to "capture some market share on a popular seasonal product and diversify their portfolios to appeal to a broader group and gain more retail space at stores and bars."
Big brewers have been selling pumpkin ales for half a decade, but their jostling for microscopic shares of the market grows more intense each season. The first salvo was fired after the Blue Moon wheat beer introduced by Coors in 1995 began gaining momentum -- it was the choice of Cambridge Police Sergeant James Crowley at the White House "beer summit" with Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates -- and Anheuser Busch responded with its Shock Top wheat brew.
"When you own as much of the audience of any industry as the macro beer companies do, you can afford to experiment, especially when your research data is showing that they specifically want something other than what you've been providing them for decades," says Matt Simpson, better known as the
. "So they experiment; creating porters, pale ales and in this case, pumpkin beers."
Their experiments are flavored with a hint of urgency. While brewers like Anheuser-Busch, Molson Coors and
SABMiller
dominate the U.S. market, the market share for craft brews at the end of 2008 was 4% by volume and 6% by sales, according to the Brewers Association. That share was up 6% and 10%, respectively, from 2007 and has grown 5% and 9% respectively for the first half of 2009 as overall beer sales declined 1.3% during the same period.
The big boys aren't sliding by much, but with 1,525 breweries in the U.S. (the most in a century) as of July, there's a lot more competition. In the macro brewers' defense, it's difficult to tell which backyard brewer will turn into the next
Boston Beer Company
(SAM) - Get Report
, which Anheuser-Busch began targeting two years ago with a line of Michelob specialty beers and
that looked suspiciously like those for
.
Anheuser-Busch took it a step further by expanding its flagship Budweiser line, adding American Ale last year and Golden Wheat next month. While American Ale was generally well received, pumpkin ales from Anheuser-Busch and Coors have earned C-plus ratings from BeerAdvocate readers. In contrast, Dogfish Head's Punkin Ale is rated B-plus and has seen its sales rise 37% since last year. The A-minus Pumking from
Southern Tier Brewing
fetches more than $8 for a 22-ounce bottle.
Does it make sense to go after the little guys? At least one critic says it's "not a smart strategy."
"The quality of other pumpkin offerings from craft brewers are not only more interesting to craft-beer drinkers but often taste better even to macro drinkers," says Joseph Tucker, executive director of
. "My mother-in-law, a Coors Light drinker, loves Punkin."
-- Reported by Jason Notte in Boston.
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Jason Notte is a reporter for TheStreet.com. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Esquire.com, Time Out New York, The Boston Herald, The Boston Phoenix, Metro newspaper and the Colorado Springs Independent.
