According to The Huffington Post, Ilinois craft brewers have been thrown into a tussle with beer distributors and massive conglomerates after a recent federal court decision to forbid all craft brewers from distributing their product after Anheuser-Busch made a business move to buy all of City Beverage, a Chicago wholesale distributor.
The dispute between craft brewers and Anheuser began when they decided they wanted to cut the middleman out of the three-tiered system for distributing alcohol: producer sells to distributor, distributor sells to retailer. By purchasing all of City Beverage, the Illinois Liquor Control Commission pointed out that this would violate the three-tier system. After this decision came through, InBev, the Belgian mega-corporation that Anheuser-Busch is a subsidiary of, pointed out that craft brewers were allowed to get distribution licenses but out-of-state were not, therefore discriminating against the latter. Judge Robert Dow, Jr. agreed with Anheuser, and chose to move forward with forbidding craft brewers from distributing their product. He added, however, “the Court temporarily stays enforcement of its ruling to provide the General Assembly an opportunity to act definitively on this matter if it chooses to do so.” This gives the state legislature a chance to get involved.
A team of local beer aficionados called Guys Drinking Beer, is one of the groups lobbying to allow craft brewers to self-distribute while keeping the three-tier system in place for behemoths like InBev. The legislation would allow any brewer that produces less than 60,000 barrels of a beer a year to obtain a distributor’s license. Brewpubs would also be able to distribute under the legislation.
This legislation would exclude some of the larger craft brewers such as Goose Island who produced 127,000 barrels last year. It would protect smaller breweries who would potentially be crippled by a requirement to use a third-party distributor.
“See, we got to thinking-the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild, who wrote the current legislation before the Illinois House and Illinois Senate, has the backs of craft brewers in the state,” the Guys write on their “Save the Craft” page. “And we know that the Associated Beer Distributors of Illinois are in the corner of distributors. And Anheuser-Busch has suits in their corner too. But what about the people who drink all that beer in the first place? We’re the ones who will ultimately be impacted by whatever proposal the legislature approves.”
The site directs leaders to call and email their legislators, encouraging them to back House Bill 205 and Senate Bill 88, the legislation that provides for this middle way.
To learn more or join the fight, visit http://www.guysdrinkingbeer.com/save-the-craft.
