The business was built from the ground up by German immigrants.
Adolphus Busch emigrated to St. Louis, Missouri from Germany in the 1850s. He immediately got into the brewing supply business and started collaborating with the Anheuser brewery. He married the owner’s daughter, Lily Anheuser, and began working for Anheuser. By 1880, Busch was the president of the company, now called Anheuser-Busch.
It was the original mass-market light beer in America.
America had a heavy English heritage in its early days, and our beer-drinking preferences mirrored those of the United Kingdom. Anheuser-Busch borrowed from Bohemian beer traditions, though, and sold light lagers.
Anheuser-Busch has a history of taking advantage of scientific innovation.
The brewery built its own refrigerated rail network to keep the fragile lagers fresh as they traveled across the country. The company was also the first to pasteurize beer, allowing it to become the first national beer brand.
Beer and big sport
Beer Budweiser is inextricably linked with almost all important events in the world of sports. So, Bud acted as the official sponsor of the NASCAR and NFL teams, and also sponsored the Beijing Olympics in 2008, the World Cup in 2010, the Vancouver Olympics of the same year and more.
Prohibition couldn’t stop the brand.
Anheuser-Busch was one of the few breweries that managed to stay open during the 10-plus years of Prohibition. To keep the business running, the brewery pumped out non-alcoholic products.
The infamous rice in the ingredient list has always been there.
Budweiser claims to use the same five ingredients that Adolphus Busch used when he started the brewery: water, barley, yeast, hops, and rice.
Bud Light has been more popular than Budweiser since 2001.
The only thing Americans love consuming in mass quantity more than lager is light lager. Bud Light was introduced in 1988 and overtook Budweiser in sales in 2001.
It can’t be sold as Budweiser in parts of Europe.
A brewery in the Czech Republic called Budejovicky Budvar has a claim on the name Budweiser for its beer, Budvar Budweiser. Instead, what Americans call Budweiser is simply called Bud.
Wassup?!
Humor has always been present in Budweiser beer ads. It is thanks to atypical and funny commercials that beer of this brand has gained such great popularity. So, for advertising “Whassup ?!” Anheuser-Busch even won the Grand Prix at the forty-eighth annual Cannes International Advertising Festival. This advertisement was rewritten on cassettes and CDs, and the funny phrase was instantly picked up by hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom were not even beer drinkers.
It’s part of a large Belgium multinational.
In 2008, Anheuser-Busch sold outside the family for the first time. It was acquired by a Belgian group to create Anheuser-Busch InBev. That group has been contentious among craft brewers as it bought up 10 independent breweries. The Brewers Association, the largest craft brewing lobbying group, has declared war on AB InBev and Budweiser.