Originally published on Good Beer Hunting website, 8 July 2019.
In this article, my first for Good Beer Hunting, I examine two deals within the UK craft beer retail sector that demonstrate AB InBev’s shifting focus towards off-trade sales.
Given the rapid growth of off-trade sales while overall beer sold has actually decreased, ABI’s renewed focus on the retail sector of the industry is a likely indicator of where, and how, it believes its customers will choose to drink beer in the future. The multinational is no stranger to owning businesses up and down the sales chain, from brewery to distribution to retail. But until now, it has not had this sort of vertical integration within the U.K.’s craft-beer sector.