John K. Labatt And The London Brewery Company

In 1844, the Empire Brewery was founded by Jacob Best and his sons in Milwaukee, WI. In 1860, Jacob’s son Phillip took over and renamed the brewery the Phillip Best Company. Phillip’s daughter, Maria married a steamship captain, Frederick Pabst. Captain Pabst sold his shipping interest and bought a partnership stake in the brewery. In 1872, Captain Pabst became President of the company. In 1889, he renamed the business the Pabst Brewing Company.

Interbrew had developed into the world's fourth largest brewer by acquiring and managing a large portfolio of national and regional beer brands in markets around the world. More recently, senior management had decided to develop one of their premium beers, Stella Artois, as a global brand. This case examines the early stages of Interbrew's global branding strategy and tactics, enabling students to consider these concepts in the context of a fragmented but consolidating industry.

     The brewing industry was once held to competition among many breweries in small geographic areas. That was almost a century ago. The U.S. brewing industry today is characterized by the dominance of three brewers, which I will talk about in this paper. There are many factors today that make the beer industry an oligopoly. Such factors include various advancements in technology (packaging, shipping and production), takeovers and mergers, economies of scale, barriers to entry, high concentration, and many other factors that I will cover in this paper. Over the course of the paper I will try to define an oligopoly, give a brief history of the brewing industry, and finally to show how the brewing industry today is an

Boston Beer Company (BBC) has enjoyed much success with their craft beers with Samuel Adams as their main focus. Being the leader of this segment, overtopping five of their competitors combined (Exhibit 1), the company now must decide how to take advantage of the light beer market. Boston Lightship, their current light beer, had been a small contributor in BBC’s product line. Currently, it is facing dwindling sales with product volumes down from 12 000 cases per month to 3000 cases per month.

politician but never succeeded in brewing. He started with a job as a tax collector and used the

John made a partnership with his three sons in 1816. The names of his sons are William, John and Thomas. Thomas was the son who would take John’s place in the business once he retired and to keep the brewery up to its superb standards. John’s other son, John junior, was in charge on the company's steamships. John’s other son, William was in also in charge of the brewery, like Thomas. In 1829, John’s wife, Sarah died, and he sold the house they had previously lived in and moved on. John died of a fever on January 10th 1836.

The next project was bottling Gordon Biersch signature beer and retailing it. This had three biggest challenges: this project was entirely Gordon’s baby and demanded time and attention; secondly the freshness of the bottled beer versus the freshly brewed was an issue for which they decided the beer would have a shelf life no longer than three months. Thirdly and the most exciting challenge was the head-to-head competition with other microbreweries and premium beers. Despite the tough competitive environment, Gordon Biersch aimed to achieve 11% of the market in three years (by 1996). This retail venture required huge investment, thus they decided to start small to prove to the investors that they could pull it off.

The Boston Beer Company, Inc., founded in 1984, is a leading brewer in United States, offering wide variety of high quality full-flavored, handcraftedbeers. It is distinctive due to the time-honored recipe of brewing and authentic, consistent quality of alcoholic beverages. Samuel Adams Boston Lager is the pride of BBC, regular handcrafted beer “stands for quality, inner self-worth, authenticity, and unique New England or Yankee toughness” ( Martin Roper, Chief Operating Officer). Unfortunately, the company experienced the failure of conquering light beer segment

Therefore, it really needed a strong product that responded the market’s needs and wants so that the product could speak itself in order to survive the keen competition.

Boston Beer, in response to consumers’ preference changes to more flavorful and bitter tasting brews, was founded in 1894. Boston Beer implements a “quality at any cost” strategy with a strong emphasis on product differentiation and implementing quality ingredients into its products. For instance, Boston Beer was the first company to employ a stamped freshness date on its bottles and ingredients are imported from around the world. Additionally, Boston Beer relies heavily on contract brewing to gain competitive advantages. Boston Beer’s contract brewing strategy results in lower overhead and transportation costs, as well as

The brewing industry can be characterized by Porter’s Five Forces framework. New entries to brewing have a relative ease in creating home micro-breweries, which is aided by

The two brewers were moved to the Springfield plant to implement new ideas and help the 8 brewers to apply them into making the new ale which match Belbin’s idea that Plants are innovators and inventors. They usually prefer to operate by themselves which may explain the difficulty in communicating with the Springfield brewers while also lacking practical constraint. The two NFB brewers may have been identified to join Springfield as Plants are often needed in the initial stages of a project such as the implementation of a new ale to a brewery.

The Company must revisit objectives and goals and look into available resources (partnerships). At an external level, facing competition from other types of craft brew products. The Company needs to assess competitor’s strength and weaknesses, gathering data which in turn may provide a “loophole” for New Belgium to target the competitor’s market share. The Company will gather information of potential new customers. Figuring out why do customers select competitor’s product over theirs or what customers want, as tastes and trends are always changing. There will always be regulatory laws and social propaganda of “drink responsibility.”

Belgium is home of the finest ales and have been known to brew for centuries. So when Jeff Lebesch, an electrical engineer from Fort Collins, Colorado took a bicycle trip through Belgium it made him realize there may be a market back home to sell Belgian-style ale. Jeff returned home with hopes to experiment and brew his own beer in his basement from the various ingredients he received on his trip. When his friends approved of the ales he started marketing them to the local town. He later opened New Belgium Brewing Company in 1991. His wife, Kim Jordan was the company’s marketing director. They named their first brew “Fat Tire Amber Ale” after Jeff’s

The brewery in St. Louis is certainly a well-known landmark within the city, but it is not