Its not about the beer!

As I sipped the latest offering from Budweiser on a sultry Saturday evening in St Louis, I knew that a piece of heritage would soon to be relegated to the pages of history. Sure enough the next days papers were awash with the news of Anheuser Busch (the parent company of Budweieser) being taken over by InBev, a Belgium based beer conglomerate. What surprised me was not the astronomical money that would change hands ($52 billion) or the fact that the merger would result in the world’s largest beer company but rather the fact that tradition and history had to bow down to economics at the end of the day.

From my office in downtown St Louis, I gaze at the Anheuser Busch refinery and the Busch Stadium (home to the St Louis Cardinals baseball team) and can empathize with the sense of loss that fellow citizens would feel . I am not yet even contemplating the economic loss that this could mean to my current city of residence.

Connoisseurs believe Budweiser isn't the best beer in the business but then Budweiser is not just a beer. No beer has as much history attached to it as the Bud. It’s what binds America together along with Levi’s Jeans , Hot Dogs, Hollywood and Coca-Cola.

To many non-Americans who wish to come to this country and make it big, it is a shining beacon of hope of all that life can possibly offer. To merely dismiss it as a 5% v.v alcoholic drink made from grains in USA would be like calling the Taj a marble building.
I am yet to think of an Indian equivalent of Budweiser- Cricket comes closest to it in terms of its ability to bind a country together.

In this time of economic despair, the take-over seems most uncalled for. And yet the silver lining to it may be the fact that the takeover indicates that the US economy is driven by hard facts and profit motive-something that will definitely help it tide over the current trough.

InBev hopes of taking the Budweiser brand across the world. One only hopes it doesn’t end up diluting the great American heritage.