Country singer John Rich made a move involving providing Bud Light at his Nashville, Tennessee, bar amid controversy surrounding the brand.
Rich made an appearance on Fox News Monday night to comment on the brand’s decision to partner with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney and why he is pulling the beer from his bar.
“The customers decide. Customers are king,” Rich said.
He explained, “I own a bar in downtown Nashville. Our number one selling beer up until a few days ago was what? Bud Light. We got cases and cases and cases of it sitting back there. But in the past several days you’re hard-pressed to find anyone ordering one. So as a business owner, I go, hey if you aren’t ordering it, we got to put something else in here. At the end of the day, that’s capitalism. That’s how it works.”
Additionally, Rich commented on every brand’s right to market how they want to.
“They’re making a bet [that] this is going to sell more product,” Rich said.
He continued, “What’s happening, Tucker, is people who have been loyal to brands for decades and decades are finding it hard to stay loyal to them, so they start hunting down other brands that they can support. There are tons of up-and-coming American brands out there that people are flooding to, kind of like mine.”
Watch the video below:
The interview comes less than a week after Rich took to his Twitter account to ask what beer he should replace Bud Light with, adding, “[Redneck Riviera].”
What beer should my bar @rnrbarnash in Nashville replace #BudLight with? @RedneckRiviera
— John Rich?? (@johnrich) April 5, 2023
According to the Redneck Riviera’s website, the bar “celebrates the men and women who make America the greatest nation in the world.”
The bar is “based on not only a work ethic that’s second to none, but also a passion for making the most of every moment. With Redneck Riviera, we’re honoring this unique American mindset by celebrating those folks who play every bit as hard as they work,” per the website.
Beer Business Daily editor and publisher Harry Schuhmacher spoke with Fox News about how distributors are concerned with the controversy.
“This is probably the biggest controversy we’ve seen in a long time,” Schuhmacher said.
He added, “It could be a tempest in a teapot, could be temporary. But it’s enough that distributors have rung the bell.”
According to Schuhmacher, “There was a little bit of worry, especially in the South and the Midwest and especially in rural areas where retailers were reporting the, you know, their customers weren’t happy with Bud Light and some retailers themselves weren’t happy with Bud Light.”
He noted the distributors “also tend to be smaller and more reliant on the Anheuser-Busch brands to pay their bills. And so, yeah, there is some concern about it.”
