Widmer Brothers is a member of the Craft Brew Alliance…and because 32% of the Craft Brew Alliance is owned by Anheuser-Busch; the Brewers Association voted to exclude Widmer Brothers from the “Craft Beer” definition (the limit is 25%). Now Kurt & Rob Widmer comment of the definition of Craft Beer & More. Details from The Street:
We've kind of gotten over that, but we've made it pretty clear that even if they changed the definition, we wouldn't want to be a part of that organization because it's a political organization, and that's not why we got into this.
Rob: Plus, as most people point out, it's a trade organization. They do good things for beer, but their No. 1 purpose is the protection of small businesses -- that just happen to be brewers. Large brewers.
Kurt: From my standpoint, it may be somewhat best that we are distanced from that organization. We just came back from the Craft Brewers' Conference and it's a continuation of a bad direction in which they purport to be promoting harmony, beer, good times and positive things, but then there are examples like creating dissent in the ranks by throwing us out. There were members who were not in support of that, but that was a board decision. While they're saying one thing, they're doing the opposite, and I'm not sure it's great for Craft Brew Alliance to be affiliated with an organization that does that.
There's no point in provoking the large breweries, which they do; there's no point in provoking wholesalers unnecessarily, which they do.
Kurt: The initiative was Jim Koch. This was all his idea. He had his own explanations that were politically motivated and there was a sufficient majority of the board that went along with him.
Jim is a very intelligent man and you can't knock his success -- he's the most successful craft brewer -- but it was always a fascination that he started as a virtual brewer and we started as bricks and mortar from Day 1. He contorted the definition so that a bricks-and-mortar brewer doesn't exist, but a virtual brewer does. We were fascinated that enough people went along with that, but one of the membership stood up on our behalf and asked to put it to a popular vote. The board said they weren't going to do that, but they would have lost. I guarantee that.
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