Oakland should say no to Big Beer
When I was first told that Golden Road, a subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev, was planning to open a shippingcontainer beer garden just blocks from my home on 40th Street in North Oakland, I thought someone might be playing a prank on me. You see, in craft brewing circles, Golden Road’s name is synonymous with not only selling out, but taking a particularly tone-deaf pride in doing so. In her first interview after selling her onceindependent Los Angeles company to AB InBev in 2015 , Golden Road’s founder and public face Meg Gill famously stated that she sold to AB InBev because she wanted to “be on the winning team.”
Throughout my career in craft beer, I have been a proud acolyte for the brewing industry’s shift toward small manufacturing and local consumption. Americanmade beer, once stripped of any nuance and color by a near complete consolidation, is now enjoying a golden age in terms of variety and quality. That is entirely due to the creativity and ingenuity of small, independent brewers.
Of all the work I’ve done, the project I am most proud of is the Hog’s Apothecary, a small gourmet beer hall located at 375 40th St. in Oakland, across the the street from the proposed Golden Road site. Though I am no longer working at Hog’s, I still take a great deal of pride in the place.
I joined Hog’s a few months prior to its opening in the summer of 2013. As we readied the restaurant, we heard from many concerned Oaklanders that our farm-totable concept and price point — a long list of unfamiliar brews ranging from $5-$7 and served in odd-looking glasses — made us a likely gentrification vanguard.
Back then, my response to this concern was always to highlight the infrastructure Hog’s was adding to the neighborhood. My bosses were, in fact, turning what had been a failed laundromat, just around the corner from a better laundromat, into a fully permitted and viable restaurant space. I would also point out that the business’ two principals, Brad Earle and John Streit, were raising families in the area and that I lived only a short walk up the street. As we were community members, we were actively invested in making Hog’s a credit to the community. Today, it continues to work with local farms and small, independent breweries and distributors. Hog’s always promoted from within and shared tips, so that all employees make a living wage
But now that a company like AB InBev has targeted 40th Street, I am terrified that I was all wrong. I worry that the success of Hog’s and our neighbors has helped to turn the corridor into a strategic beachhead for one of the largest companies in the world — and that all of our hard work served only to fatten frogs for snakes.
AB InBev is the largest beer conglomerate on the planet, owning Budweiser, Miller and roughly 400 other brands worldwide. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has called AB InBev “an aspiring monopoly.”
For years AB InBev (and Anheuser-Busch previously) has tried to put a kink in the hose when it comes to smaller brewers’ access to consumers. In grocery stores, AB InBev pays for prime-shelf placements, and creates or acquires brands like Golden Road, Shock Top, 10 Barrel and Devils Backbone, giving customers the illusion of choice. This serves to clog up the store shelves and leave little room for products made by independent companies.
Not satisfied with controlfive ling the large retail store market, AB InBev then targeted the draft beer segment through a campaign of forced distributor consolidation. I have personally witnessed draft beer placements that could have otherwise gone to small, local beer manufacturers being purchased with free kegs by AB InBev’s local distributor, an illegal practice for which AB InBev’s Southern California distributors were just fined.
In spite of all this, craft beer has continued to grow. We’ve done so by adapting. In most states, California included, there are special laws to help small independent breweries compete. These include privileges like allowing brewpubs to sell directly to the public, and providing that small-production brewers can have up to taprooms under a single production brewing license. In those taprooms, small brewers can pour tastes and fill growlers for customers to take home. Small brewers are allowed to self-distribute directly to retailers, while large companies must sell to a middleman.
As much as anything else, these laws and exceptions are responsible for the very existence of small American beer manufacturing. They are the reasons why craft beer has flourished.
Just take a look around the Bay Area’s vibrant craft beer scene. Instead of selling bottles at the local grocer, we sell growlers out of our tasting rooms. Instead of trying to sell beer in 50 counties through five different distributors, a company like Russian River Brewing Co.
chooses to self-distribute to select Bay Area accounts, in spite of global name recognition and demand. East Bay companies like Faction and Temescal have turned their brewery tasting rooms into destinations that generate the majority of their revenue. Fieldwork grows by opening satellite tasting rooms in Monterey, Sacramento, Napa and soon Bay Meadows in San Mateo. The Rare Barrel runs a bottle club similar to what small wineries maintain.
Now, however, we are seeing that AB InBev won’t allow smaller brewers even these modest footholds. With the acquisition of companies like Golden Road, 10 Barrel in Oregon and, just this month, Wicked Weed in North Carolina, AB InBev believes it has purchased a collection of costume brands that should allow them access to these privileges.
If this Golden Road beer garden, along with similar ones planned for San Diego and West Sacramento, is allowed to go forward, we will have allowed one of the largest conglomerates in the world — a multibillion-dollar, multinational entity that is publicly traded and actively lobbies Congress — a set of privileges designed to aid the sort of business that needs a Kickstarter to brew its first beer.
I have heard it said that those of us who are in opposition to this project are shaken small-business owners afraid of competition. In fact, quite the opposite is true. It turns out that Meg Gill was wrong. AB InBev is not the winning team; we are. They know that they can’t compete with us on a level playing field, so their tactics are becoming more nakedly monopolistic.
If the craft beer industry is everything we tell people it is, then it is worth protecting. That means caring about who owns the companies we support. Be suspicious of anyone who is trying to tell you otherwise and be ready to give up some beers and brands you’ve enjoyed in the past.
Those of us who labor under banners like “local,” “slow,” “independent” and “craft” tend to pat ourselves on the back for doing so. When we ask neighborhoods like North Oakland to welcome us, we often talk about the virtues of local ownership and the interdependent economics of small companies. However, if our work serves only, or even in part, to provide a blueprint for a rapacious multinational to follow, are we any better than them? If we want our work to be more than the coat of primer that precedes thick layers of boring corporate beige, we must defend it in the face of an encroaching monopoly.