Last week, the domestic beer world was flipped upside down when Bud Light revealed a partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.
The move received a ton of backlash, as a number of loyal Bud Light drinkers promised to boycott the brand. But then Bud Light doubled down when the brand’s VP of Marketing, Alissa Heinerscheid, called the brand “fratty” and “out of touch.”
“We had this hangover… I mean Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach.”
Naturally, that didn’t sit well with the longtime fans of the popular beer brand.
Of course, we all saw Kid Rock’s viral response, but he wasn’t alone. Fellow country music artists John Rich and Travis Tritt also announced plans to boycott the brand.
We saw Travis Tritt announce that he will be removing Bud Light from his tour hospitality rider, and John Rich, 1/2 of the country duo Big & Rich, has spoken out against it as well, and even hinted that he would remove it from his Nashville bar Redneck Riviera.
“What beer should my bar Redneck Riviera in Nashville replace Bud Light with?”
With that being said, Rich made an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s segment on FOX News, where he weighed in more on Bud Light’s decision to make Mulvaney an ambassador of the brand, and what it means for his bar.
“There is a lot of smart, high-paid people that spend millions and millions and millions of dollars to do what? To sell more product. It’s their right to market it however they want.
They’re making a bet this is going to sell more product.”
However, he pointed out how the company obviously doesn’t know their demographic as sales of the beer have plummeted at his Nashville bar.
“The customers decide. Customers are king. I own a bar in downtown Nashville. Our number one selling beer up until a few days ago was what? Bud Light. We got cases and cases and cases of it sitting back there.
But in the past several days you’re hard-pressed to find anyone ordering one. So as the business owner, I go, ‘hey if you aren’t ordering it, we got to put something else in here.’
At the end of the day, that’s capitalism. That’s how it works.”
Since Bud Light’s announcement, a FOX Business report has shown that Anheuser-Busch products dropped 30%, and some bars have seen a decline in sales up to 50%.
You can check out the full conversation here:
