Beer

This benefits large national breweries because they are able to transfer knowledge between markets, and spread the costs of developing expertise and brands over more sales. Many of the national brewers are already acquiring regional brewers or forging alliances with them to get access to local markets. Such deals are important for companies with aspirations of entering the regional brewery market because most markets are dominated by a few players that control the distribution systems determining which beer makes it into the stores. A few of the major breweries, led by Miller and Coors, have launched pseudo-micros, such as Plank Road and Blue Moon. Although none has been particularly successful, that didn't stop Anheuser-Busch from bringing out its own, such as, Michelob Specialty Ales and Lagers. "Anheuser-Busch is aggressively seeking market share with stated goals of 60 percent of the whole beer pie by 2005 and to help accomplish this they have launched their own "craft beers." Should they succeed the "ethnic cleansing" will not just be of brands in a warehouse but of the smaller breweries themselves (Bertsch).".
             It seems to me that the theme of this article is that consumers are looking for something different. We're seeing it in coffee we're seeing it in the restaurant business, now we're seeing it in beer. But as consumers around America become exposed to a greater variety of products, certain characteristics will emerge as preferred and that I think will help regional brewers gain economies of scale by increasing their demand and a need for higher production output. "What consumers want out of a beer is becoming consistent across the country (Sneath)." .
             According to the article "Looking for a Good Small Brewery," today's concern is not so much for the quality of the product but for the viability of what is now a very large and growing industry. Small breweries have grown to regional status, regional breweries become national, and some of the biggest breweries acquire smaller ones and/or introduce their own versions of craft beer.