A-B’s (and the industry’s) Big Challenge

A-B, and by extension the rest of the domestic beer business, has a heck of a problem. As August Busch IV pointed out at their business meeting in Orlando, wine and spirits are continuing to outpace beer growth. While we're having a remarkably good year so far in 2006, A-B only expects the US beer business to be up about 0.5% going forward, on average. But from where we sit, all of that growth, and then some, is driven by