Bartenders say “no one wants Bud Light at their event anymore” as consumer demand plummets

According to the pop-up bar owner, Bud Light’s popularity continues to decline as both corporate and personal events no longer display the Anheuser-Busch brand at their gatherings.

Catarina Tucker, the founder of Barnastics – a mobile bartending company based in New Jersey – shared Fox news there has been a ‘significant shift’ of Bud Light with its customers lately.

In April, the Anheuser-Busch-owned brand became embroiled in a controversy over a promotion it did with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

The company has since lost billions of dollars in market cap and continues to be boycotted by tens of millions of former consumers.

This month, Modelo Especial has dethroned Bud Light as the top US beer as its sales are up more than 15 percent from the same time a year ago.

The brand has been forced to buy back expired beer from wholesalers and is considering how to deal with the people at any point in the sales lifecycle who experience lost profits.

While Tucker said the liquor stores she works with haven’t started selling Bud Light at a discount yet, the consumer backlash is being felt.

‘[Demand for Bud Light] has completely vanished. Nobody wants it at their event anymore,” she said.

“There are a few customers who have told me their feelings about it, and it’s no longer popular.”

She said her customers, and consumers in general, are becoming increasingly aware of whether the brands they support are in line with their personal and political values.

As a result, people are “actively seeking alternatives to Bud Light, gravitating towards craft beers, specialty cocktails and premium spirits.”

Tucker said she doesn’t believe the brand will return to popularity anytime soon.

“With the feedback I’ve gotten and how strongly many customers feel about it, it [the company] doesn’t switch, I don’t see the popularity rising again,” she said.

Tucker’s corporate website allows customers to create a custom proposal that helps the company see and understand any shifts in demand for certain products.

“Sometimes it blows over,” she noted, but added that as a company, Bud Light’s actions “carry a lot of weight” with their consumers.

Tucker said she hasn’t noticed the same drop in demand for other Anheuser-Busch products, like Budweiser, but “anything that’s Bud Light, they just don’t support.”

Bud Light sales have been in free fall for weeks, dropping about 25 percent in the past month.

Catarina Tucker said she doesn’t expect Bud Light’s popularity to recover anytime soon

Bud Light, whose sales are down 25 percent in the past month, has released a Pride beer line

In a note last week, JPMorgan analysts said they expect AB InBev’s U.S. earnings before interest and taxes to fall 26 percent this year, amid a 12 percent drop in volume and a 10 percent drop in revenue.

“We believe there is a segment of US consumers who will not be drinking Bud Light for the foreseeable future,” the note read.

Bud Light’s parent company said earlier this month that it will triple its marketing spending in the US this summer to boost ailing sales.

Michel Doukeris, CEO of Anheuser-Busch InBev, downplayed the impact of the setback, saying that Bud Light sales declines in the first three weeks of April in the US represented only 1 percent of InBev’s global volumes.

“We think we have the experience, the resources and the partners to manage this,” Doukeris said on a conference call with investors earlier this month.

Conservatives pushed ahead with the boycott, leading the Belgium-based brewer to send two executives responsible for the partnership — Alissa Heinerscheid, its vice president of marketing, and her boss, Daniel Blake — on furlough in April.

Mulvaney worked with Bud Light as part of their March Madness campaign in April and received a can of light beer with her face on it as a gift

Heinerscheid was hired in June 2022 to overhaul Bud Light’s marketing with a vision to refresh its image, while Blake spent nearly nine years at Anheuser-Busch.

Heinerscheid’s short-lived tenure reportedly included a critically acclaimed Super Bowl ad featuring Miles Teller and his wife Keleigh Sperry, as well as “the Bud Light Carry” campaign in which a woman carried a round of beer to a table of friends without spilling a drop . .

Those ads, statements by the beer brand revealed, were part of Heinerscheid’s vision to make the brand more female-friendly — something she described as a “passion point” just a few months ago.

But that vision was quickly shattered on April 3 when the brand partnered with Mulvaney, a controversial trans activist with a massive social media following, which proved to be a step too far for Bud Light’s loyal customers.

After Anheuser-Busch attempted to distance itself from the Mulvaney promotion, Bud Light also faced backlash from the opposite direction, with pro-LGBTQ groups accusing the company of abandoning the transgender influencer.