St. Louis Cardinals fans are seeing something they never expected at Busch Stadium: craft beer flowing beside the Budweiser taps.
Until a couple of months ago, Anheuser-Busch InBev’s namesake baseball park allowed locally brewed Schlafly draft beer to be sold at one concession stand. By the end of the baseball season, eight were selling it.
“It’s like people are finally realizing that there is more than just a Bud,” said Mark Schwartz, 53, a season-ticket holder at the St. Louis Rams’ Edward Jones Dome, where Schlafly debuted for football fans this season. “It’s great to root on your hometown team with a hometown beer.”
Generations’ worth of local loyalty is eroding in the wake of InBev’s 2008 hostile takeover of Anheuser- Busch — a St. Louis tradition since 1852, when it was called Bavarian. For Schlafly and other small breweries in the city, it’s an opportunity to exploit the increased interest in craft beers nationwide.
Drinking Bud in St. Louis used to be like driving a Ford or a Chrysler in Detroit. Bars, restaurants and catering companies didn’t want to offend the company or its fans by offering other brands, said Mike Sweeney, a systems administrator and former part-time tour guide at Schlafly who runs a beer blog called STL Hops.
Then Leuven, Belgium-based InBev bought Anheuser-Busch in November 2008 and by Christmas that year had trimmed about 1,400 U.S. jobs, three-quarters of them in St. Louis. They ranged from executives to brewery workers in a city where the baseball stadium carries the name of Anheuser-Busch’s founding family. Bloomberg News
