Anheuser-Busch InBev, the maker of Bud Light, confirmed this week is laying off hundreds of positions across its U.S. corporate staff.
The beer maker said the layoffs will impact less than 2% of its workforce. Anheuser-Busch's website says the company employs 19,000 employees nationwide. Warehouse staff, drivers and other frontline employees will not be affected, the company said.
The job cuts arrive during a rocky time for Anheuser-Busch, which has seen a months-long sales decline for Bud Light since April when conservative critics vowed to boycott the brand after the brewer sent a commemorative can to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Bud Light has also faced backlash from Mulvaney's supporters and LGBTQ+ rights groups, who say the brand didn't do enough to support her.
Mulvaney later shared that she felt abandoned by Bud Light, and faced "more bullying and transphobia than I could have ever imagined" over the partnership.
Bud Light is continuing to lose share in the U.S. market to brands like Modelo Especial, which recently surpassed Bud Light in sales for the first time. In the month ending July 15, Bud Light's U.S. sales were down 26.5%, while Modelo's were up 13.5%. Bud Light held a 6.8% share of the U.S. beer market in that period, while Modelo held an 8.7% share. Grupo Modelo is also owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev.
When confirming this week's layoffs, Anheuser-Busch cited restructuring needs and said the changes would "simplify and reduce layers" within the company's organization.
"While we never take these decisions lightly, we want to ensure that our organization continues to be set for future long-term success," CEO Brendan Whitworth said in a statement. "These corporate structure changes will enable our teams to focus on what we do best — brewing great beer for everyone and earning our place in the moments that matter."
Anheuser-Busch did not share a timeline for the layoffs in its statement. But according to The Wall Street Journal, the restructuring has already eliminated marketing and corporate roles at major U.S. offices, including those in New York and Los Angeles.
Since the fallout of the Mulvaney partnership, Bud Light's name has been brought into other anti-LGBTQ+ campaigns and controversies targeting separate brands — including recent incidents at Target, where some angry customers tipped over Pride merchandise and confronted workers, as well as social media campaigns against Disney and Chick-fil-A.
Carrie Coon Relishes Being Part Of An Ensemble–From “The Gilded Age” To “His Three Daughters”
It can be hard to catch Carrie Coon on her own.
She is far more likely to be found in the thick of an ensemble. That could be on TV, in "The Gilded Age," for which she was just Emmy nominated, or in the upcoming season of "The White Lotus," which she recently shot in Thailand. Or it could be in films, most relevantly, Azazel Jacobs' new drama, "His Three Daughters," in which Coon stars alongside Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen as sisters caring for their dying father.
But on a recent, bright late-summer morning, Coon is sitting on a bench in the bucolic northeast Westchester town of Pound Ridge. A few years back, she and her husband, the playwright Tracy Letts, moved near here with their two young children, drawn by the long rows of stone walls and a particularly good BLT from a nearby cafe that Letts, after biting into, declared must be within 15 miles of where they lived.
In a few days, they would both fly to Los Angeles for the Emmys (Letts was nominated for his performance in "Winning Time" ). But Coon, 43, was then largely enmeshed in the day-to-day life of raising a family, along with their nightly movie viewings, which Letts pulls from his extensive DVD collection. The previous night's choice: "Once Around," with Holly Hunter and Richard Dreyfus.
Coon met Letts during her breakthrough performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?" on Broadway in 2012. She played the heavy-drinking housewife Honey. It was the first role that Coon read and knew, viscerally, she had to play. Immediately after saying this, Coon sighs.
"It sounds like something some diva would say in a movie from the '50s," Coon says. "I just walked around in my apartment in my slip and I had pearls and a little brandy. I made a grocery list and I just did... Read More