A beer summit at the White House might be just what premium brewers needed to lift sales for the rest of the summer.
Sales for the $90 billion beer business are soft so far this summer – traditionally the time when most beer is sold. Analysts split the blame between the weak economy and rainier-than-normal weather in parts of the country.
Beer sales were flat for the four weeks ended July 11 and including the lead-up to July 4, according to Nielsen and JPMorgan.
But President Obama’s offer to unite Massachusetts police officer Sgt. James Crowley and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates at the White House last week to reconcile an arrest and race issue put beer in the spotlight. “Regardless of the beer picks, it’s been great buzz for the beer industry,” says Julian Green, MillerCoors spokesman. “It puts beer top of mind.”
Anheuser-Busch was center stage at the meeting with Bud Light and MillerCoors with its Belgian-style Blue Moon brew. Sam Adams Light made it on the menu because of a letter to the White House from Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., who pushed to have American brews at the table.
Photo by White House.