Bud Light, which has been displaced as the nation’s top-selling beer following the Dylan Mulvaney fiasco, is in danger of falling farther behind its rivals when retailers reset shelf space this fall.
Wholesalers, industry experts, and a former Anheuser-Busch executive told ABC News on Friday that Bud Light could lose refrigerator space at retailers such as Walmart and 7-Eleven.
“During a busy shopping period on a Friday or Saturday night, if you don’t have the beer available cold on the shelf, consumers pick something else,” former Anheuser-Busch InBev executive Anson Frericks told ABC News.
Frericks said that shelf space is “the single largest determinant of sales in a store.”
“There will be a dramatic shift,” Frericks he told the outlet.
Modelo Especial supplanted Bud Light as the top-selling beer after the Anheuser-Busch brand’s disastrous tie-up with the trans influencer in April sparked calls for a boycott.
The latest sales figures show Bud Light continued to lose ground to Modelo, as well as Coors Light and Yuengling.
In the four-week period that ended in early September, sales of Bud Light dipped 27% compared to the same period a year ago, according to Bump Williams Consulting and Nielsen IQ.
Dave Williams, vice president of analytics and insights at Bump Williams Consulting, told ABC News that retailers keep an eye on sales figures to determine which brands should be granted prime shelf space in their stores.
“There’s explosive growth on one side and sharp decline on the other,” Williams said.
“This does have that ripple effect where if Bud Light loses space on the shelf, that could make it a longer-term endeavor to claw back to where they were if they’re ever able to do that in the first place.”
“You’ve got to be on the shelf first to be selling,” Williams added.
The Post has sought comment from Walmart and 7-Eleven.
A representative from Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch InBev was not immediately available for comment.
Carlos Laboy, a beverage industry analyst for HSBC, told ABC News that Anheuser-Busch distributors have seen revenue decline by at least 33%.
As a result, a number of wholesalers are cutting back services and frequency of visits to retailers, which will only hamper sales of Bud Light even more.
Distributors are surprised at the staying power of the boycott, which intensified thanks to viral calls on social media to shun Bud Light after Mulvaney touted the beer to her millions of followers on Instagram and TikTok.
“The boycott has lasted longer than anybody thought,” the general manager of a Wisconsin-based Anheuser-Busch distributor told ABC News.
“Every retailer has their own opinion for what sales warrant on their shelves. Time will tell.”
If shelf space is cleared for other brands besides Bud Light, the general manager conceded that “could be an issue,” though he did not expect “drastic change.”
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