Cheaper than water? Retailers try to unload Bud Light.

On a recent steamy Sunday afternoon, customers strolled down the aisles of Glenn Miller’s Beer & Soda Warehouse, where ceiling fans circulated the hot air.

People heading to picnics, graduations and other gatherings in Lemoyne, a Pennsylvania community across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg, entered the store, past countless displays of beer, with cases of top brands piled high.

Next to 30-packs of Miller Lite, which retails for $24.99, was a stack of Bud Light. A large banner above said that a 30-pack was only $8.99 after a discount.

Andy Wagner, the store’s manager and an 18-year veteran, said the Miller Lite sold well. And the Bud Light? Not so much.

“Right now it’s cheaper than some of the crates of water we sell in the back,” said Mr. Wagner, noting that since mid-April, Bud Light sales in the store were 45 percent lower than a year ago. “It just doesn’t move like it used to.”

Nearly three months after transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a video to her Instagram account promoting a Bud Light contest, sparking online outrage from the right and a boycott, the beer brand is still struggling to gain loyal, longtime customers to win back.

For more than two decades, Bud Light was the best-selling beer in the United States. Revenue last year exceeded $5 billion, about 9 percent of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s revenue. But since the boycott, Bud Light has been dethroned by Modelo Especial. In the four weeks ending mid-June, national Bud Light sales volume fell an average of 29 percent from a year earlier, according to data from research firm NIQ, analyzed by consulting firm Bump Williams.

Shares of Anheuser-Busch are also down more than 15 percent since early April. The company did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

In a Wednesday interview with “CBS This Morning,” Brendan Whitworth, the CEO of Anheuser-Busch North America Zone, acknowledged that the past few weeks had been “challenging” for the brand.

“The Bud Light conversation has moved away from beer,” said Mr. Whitworth, adding that he took responsibility for the impact of the controversy on the company’s employees, customers and distribution partners. “The conversation has been divisive and Bud Light really doesn’t belong there.”

When asked if he would again run the campaign with a transgender influencer, Mr Whitworth did not immediately answer.

“There’s a big social conversation going on right now and big brands are in the middle of it,” he said. “And it’s not just our industry or Bud Light. It happens in retail. It happens in fast food.

“And so what we need to understand, deeply understand and value for us is the consumer and what they want, care about and what they expect from big brands.”

With the summer sales season in full swing — the four months between May and August account for a whopping 40 percent of annual beer sales — the question swirling around Bud Light is whether the slump is temporary or the new normal.

“We’re about 10 weeks in now and we’re still seeing double-digit declines in volumes nationally,” said Bump Williams, who heads the consulting firm that bears his name. “This is no longer an anomaly. This is a worrying trend.”

Indeed, most of the larger beer distributors or wholesalers — middlemen who buy brands from brewers like Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors and then sell them to stores, restaurants and bars — believe the impact will last more than six months, according to a study released this month. has been published. by the Wall Street investment bank Jefferies. One-third of distributors believe the impact on Bud Light will be lasting.

Mr. Wagner said Anheuser-Busch made a mistake when its marketing violated what he called “bar rules.” That means “no politics, no religion.” He noted that Glenn had never allowed Miller’s local politicians to put up signs in or around the store so as not to alienate customers.

When asked how long he thought the drop in sales would last, Mr. Wagner shrugged. “I’ve traditionally seen Bud Light customers trying other beers,” he said. “If they find something they like, they might not come back.”

Beer distributors, many of whom are independent or family-owned, are well aware of the drop in Bud Light sales.

Steve Tatum, the general manager of the Bama Budweiser family business in Montgomery, Ala., paid for a local radio advertisement to discuss the opposition to Bud Light. “We at Bama Budweiser are also angry about it and have expressed our feelings to the top leadership at Anheuser-Busch,” said Mr. Tatum in the ad. He added that his company, an independent wholesaler, “employs about 100 people who live here, work here, and our children go to school here.”

Mr Tatum did not respond to a request for comment.

Anheuser-Busch also seems to want to remind the public of the people behind the beer. On Wednesday, the company released an ad campaign, “We Make the Beer,” which focuses on the many steps involved in making beer, as well as the individuals behind the process. It has also hinted that it could bring back the popular Bud Knight character in advertising as part of its effort to move past the controversy.

The company has also repurchased or exchanged boxes of Bud Light that were in distributor warehouses when they reached their expiration date. In June, the company unveiled a multi-tiered plan to its distributors, including sales incentive payments and reimbursement of freight and fuel costs through the end of the year, according to Beer Business Daily.

For Glenn Miller’s, the repercussions of the Bud Light controversy have not had much of a business impact. The retailer has been in business since 1986 and sells 1,500 beer brands in its 18,000 square foot warehouse.

“So if a consumer is foregoing a Bud Light, which is now down 30 percent since the beginning of the year, it’s fine to find something else to try,” Rodney Miller, Glenn Miller’s CEO, said in a statement. e-mail. (Mr. Miller founded the retailer with his father, Glenn.)

Mr. Wagner echoed those sentiments as he walked the aisles of the store.

“It’s not that they stopped drinking beer,” he said of his customers. “They just stopped buying Bud Light.”