What's to say that Anheuser-Busch isn't about to be surpassed by another local brewery as the largest holder of market share in St. Louis?
That thought was not even a glimmer in the eyes of most St. Louisans until earlier this year when InBev offered and then bought the world's largest brewer from its local owners. Now, the news comes today from the newly-named A-B/InBev that 14-hundred salaried jobs will be eliminated due to the merger of A-B and InBev --- approximately 75-percent of those positions will come from St. Louis.
The InBev brew-crew announcing today that they would eliminate 415 contractor positions and not fill 250 company-wide U.S. jobs which had been open and unfilled. In a statement released today, the president of Anheuser-Busch, David A. Peacock said the moves were being made to "keep the business strong and competitive" and added "this is a necessary but difficult move for the company" and further stated that the company "will assist in the transition for these employees as much as possible."
The media release also stated:
"The company will provide employees severance pay and pension benefits based on age and years of service. Employees also will be offered additional benefits during the transition, including outplacement services. The announced workforce reductions are in addition to the more than 1,000 U.S. salaried employees company-wide who accepted the company’s voluntary enhanced retirement program, which closed November 14 and provided special benefits for eligible employees retiring by the end of 2008. The retirements were part of planned cost reductions of 1 billion dollars (U.S.) called project Blue Ocean, announced by Anheuser-Busch in June 2008. At that time, the company announced plans to reduce its company-wide U.S. full-time salaried workforce of 8,600 by 10 to 15 percent before the year end. The company’s other Blue Ocean cost reductions remain on track.
The plans announced today are an integral part of the at least 1.5 billion dollars (U.S.) in annual synergies identified by InBev when it announced its combination with Anheuser-Busch in July. The company is confident in its ability to achieve against this synergies projection by 2011. Going forward, in addition to the priority to continue to grow the top line, Anheuser-Busch InBev will focus on its goals of integrating the businesses, delivering the expected synergies and deleveraging the company."
END OF STORY
++++++++++++++++++++++++
BEGIN THE BLOG-UINE
["deliveraging the company", eh? Is that delivering the enraging of those who respected the company?]
So, now come those questions about who will step-up to grab the largest market share now that the "local favorite" is no longer "locally owned and operated". For decades it was assumed that A-B would never surrender the local customers. However since this deal has now started to show its teeth on the local economy (most of the A-B jobs to be eliminated will either be gone by the end of 2008 or certainly by the end of 2009), the customers will start to find other brewskies...locally-brewed beers seem to be favored by the general public. As the only large option for more than a decade was the St. Louis Brewery and Tap Room's Schlafly Beers [which has become the city's only large and locally-owned beermaker --- thank you very much Tom Schlafly]. the Schlafly labeled products made many endroads and was found in bars and on grocers' shelves, alongside the Buds, Michelobs, Coors, Miller Lite, imports and other domestics such as Sam Adams and Kansas City's Boulevard (I'm rather partial to their wheat and the Schlafly Hefeweizen). But in more recent days, O'Fallon Brewery (St. Charles County) has found its way onto the store shelves and in bars and pubs. This, and several other locally brewed and marketed beers, are setting up something different: the brew-ha-ha over which company stands to benefit the MOST from the loss of A-B jobs. See how this works yet?
By the time I got to publishing this on here, I'd read several online comments in regard to the announcement today --- and there were comments of "buy Schlafly" and "Schlafly and O'Fallon" --- which should come as no surprise to most St. Louis beer drinkers, and even those who don't drink the beer but follow the business news.
What's next?
In the coming weeks, the local market share of A-B will likely diminish --- again. "Again" is a statement because after the city's A-B beer distributor locked out the union workers a couple of years ago, they struggled to regain some of their business. And it appears that St. Louis beer drinkers have a better memory than those atop A-B/In-Bev would think. The question is --- will they retain the largest market share, or will A-B/In-Bev find themselves down a few notches by mid-summer 2009? There is no crystal ball on this.
So, who is up for a locally-produced Schlafly Hefeweizen or Oktoberfest or Pale Ale, or an O'Fallon Gold, or a Morgan Street Honey Wheat or Irish Stout, or a Trailhead Brewery Blonde Ale? It could be literally thousands of St. Louisans who will claim to be "fed up with InBev" and won't buy their beer. If that is the case, then there are a few local breweries who may have to ramp-up their production even in these tough economic times. Certainly whoever will be marketing their local products in the most outstanding way (read: spend lots and lots of money on advertising) will likely see some benefit from the action that locals will say was perpetrated by InBev.
08 December 2008
05 November 2008
Election Cycle Ends: Problems Remain
It's Wednesday morning and you're a customer of the Metro Bus and MetroLink system. As you run out the door to the corner where your 5:12AM bus picks you up on the first leg of your journey, you pick up your St. Louis Post-Dispatch and start thumbing through the pages. You suddenly realize that because there are thousands of selfish St. Louisans, you may soon be unable to go to work at the job you have had for several years. Yes, in troubled economic times, the voters of St. Louis became even MORE SELFISH than ever before by defeating Proposition M which would have helped fund the system which has been riddled by problems during the recession as well as numerous fiscal gaffes BEFORE the economy started hitting the skids. The problem now is that Metro will begin massive scale cutbacks, including layoffs of personnel, fewer buses and trains running --- period--- which will, in turn, cause ridership to decline. Meanwhile prices for ridership will skyrocket. The prices will go up incrementally higher for those who can least afford to have their transportation costs go up than the cost would have been to those driving automobiles, trucks, SUV's and even scooters IF ONLY the voters had passed Proposition M in the first place.
This is not a test, people. This is reality. Do you know what this means? Well --- to explain what it will mean, let me introduce you to Rider Strongman, a St. Louisan. Mr. Strongman is in his early 40s and has had a good job in the past where he made more than $40000 in a year. But along with the industry in which he was a highly-skilled worker and was even sought-after by some who knew him "back in the day", times have changed for Rider Strongman. He hasn't worked full-time in more than three years. He hasn't held a full-time job in his chosen industry for four years, unless you count the time he spent working for a company which failed to pay him for 75% of his work earlier this year. You can hardly blame him for leaving that situation, could you? After all, he had to take a bus, a MetroLink train, and another train just to get to THAT job, located in the metro east, and did so for four months --- paying out of pocket for the monthly bus pass which allowed him easy access to his job location. Lacking access to a job location is not always the case now, but once the new cuts go into effect, this is something with which Mr. Strongman will be forced to deal. He'll be walking even more than he has in the past because the buses will run less frequently AND there will be FAR FEWER LINES running in the first place. Rain or shine, he'll want to be on time, but with the shutdown of certain lines, he may not be able to GET a job outside of the 270 Loop. That's because Metro is likely going to shut down ALL bus service outside of I-270 because of the projected budget shortfall for 2009.
Now --- just a moment, people. Don't rush off to another blog site just yet. This is only STARTING TO GET INTERESTING.
Why will 2009 be even more interesting in St. Louis because Proposition M was voted down??? It will be the difficulty with which so many businesses will be able to hire people at barely above minimum wage because those workers who have traditionally been able to work for less (and get to work at all) will not be able to afford bus fare and train fare once the rates have increased beyond their means. Thus, unemployment goes up in St. Louis. The jobless will be forced to find alternative means for income including applications for public assistance for food and shelter, not to mention all those unemployment payments coming out of "the system". These (to borrow Senator McCain's oft-used phrase) my friends, are going to become harsh realities to all in the St. Louis area.
Ladies and Gentlemen of St. Louis --- the economy may be showing signs of improving in some locations, but you've just about signed the paperwork that the St. Louis economy is going to show signs of grinding to a near halt.
As Mr. Strongman knows --- like the Metro Bus and MetroLink rider from the first paragraph who sat in his bus seat reading the disparaging news in the morning paper --- because of the selfish voters who cannot believe that the problems of this region will be compounded if they let those who use public transportation down, filling jobs and being able to get less-expensive workers to work will become more of a burden. It didn't seem to matter to the voters on Tuesday. You see, these two people see that the voters with their own transportation have spoken loud and clear: "WE can get to work. WE don't care if someone else CAN'T get there. THEY probably don't want to work anyway."
Selfish and mindless, the voters have spoken.
================================
If you are someone who voted against Proposition M, please state your reasons to Mr. Strongman and the tens-of-thousands of commuters who depend upon Metro service to keep their costs reasonable.
Here's your chance to sound-off against Proposition M --- but you have to be compelling for anyone to believe your argument. Send your emails to newsstlouis@gmail.com and we'll publish your comments as you sent them.
EDITORS - NEWS ST. LOUIS
This is not a test, people. This is reality. Do you know what this means? Well --- to explain what it will mean, let me introduce you to Rider Strongman, a St. Louisan. Mr. Strongman is in his early 40s and has had a good job in the past where he made more than $40000 in a year. But along with the industry in which he was a highly-skilled worker and was even sought-after by some who knew him "back in the day", times have changed for Rider Strongman. He hasn't worked full-time in more than three years. He hasn't held a full-time job in his chosen industry for four years, unless you count the time he spent working for a company which failed to pay him for 75% of his work earlier this year. You can hardly blame him for leaving that situation, could you? After all, he had to take a bus, a MetroLink train, and another train just to get to THAT job, located in the metro east, and did so for four months --- paying out of pocket for the monthly bus pass which allowed him easy access to his job location. Lacking access to a job location is not always the case now, but once the new cuts go into effect, this is something with which Mr. Strongman will be forced to deal. He'll be walking even more than he has in the past because the buses will run less frequently AND there will be FAR FEWER LINES running in the first place. Rain or shine, he'll want to be on time, but with the shutdown of certain lines, he may not be able to GET a job outside of the 270 Loop. That's because Metro is likely going to shut down ALL bus service outside of I-270 because of the projected budget shortfall for 2009.
Now --- just a moment, people. Don't rush off to another blog site just yet. This is only STARTING TO GET INTERESTING.
Why will 2009 be even more interesting in St. Louis because Proposition M was voted down??? It will be the difficulty with which so many businesses will be able to hire people at barely above minimum wage because those workers who have traditionally been able to work for less (and get to work at all) will not be able to afford bus fare and train fare once the rates have increased beyond their means. Thus, unemployment goes up in St. Louis. The jobless will be forced to find alternative means for income including applications for public assistance for food and shelter, not to mention all those unemployment payments coming out of "the system". These (to borrow Senator McCain's oft-used phrase) my friends, are going to become harsh realities to all in the St. Louis area.
Ladies and Gentlemen of St. Louis --- the economy may be showing signs of improving in some locations, but you've just about signed the paperwork that the St. Louis economy is going to show signs of grinding to a near halt.
As Mr. Strongman knows --- like the Metro Bus and MetroLink rider from the first paragraph who sat in his bus seat reading the disparaging news in the morning paper --- because of the selfish voters who cannot believe that the problems of this region will be compounded if they let those who use public transportation down, filling jobs and being able to get less-expensive workers to work will become more of a burden. It didn't seem to matter to the voters on Tuesday. You see, these two people see that the voters with their own transportation have spoken loud and clear: "WE can get to work. WE don't care if someone else CAN'T get there. THEY probably don't want to work anyway."
Selfish and mindless, the voters have spoken.
================================
If you are someone who voted against Proposition M, please state your reasons to Mr. Strongman and the tens-of-thousands of commuters who depend upon Metro service to keep their costs reasonable.
Here's your chance to sound-off against Proposition M --- but you have to be compelling for anyone to believe your argument. Send your emails to newsstlouis@gmail.com and we'll publish your comments as you sent them.
EDITORS - NEWS ST. LOUIS
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