Anheuser-Busch

Innovation, a long-standing strategy at Anheuser-Busch, represents the path to greatness. Adolphus Busch employed this strategy 120 years ago to make Budweiser the first national beer--using new ideas like pasteurizing beer, refrigerating railcars to transport it across the country and mobilizing grassroots salespeople to market the product. Today, Anheuser-Busch has some of the most innovative brewing, packaging and adventure-park facilities in the world. Leaders keep their eye on the future and continually find new ways to think about their business. Anheuser-Busch is no exception. Key Dates: Anheuser, together with son-in-law Adolphus Busch, expand sales into Texas and Louisiana. Anheuser-Busch Companies, Inc. is the largest brewer in the world, producing more than 100 million barrels of beer each year. The company's primary brands, Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob, and Busch, are market leaders, enabling the massive St. Louis enterprise to claim nearly 50 percent of the U.S. beer market. Anheuser-Busch also operates nine theme parks, including Busch Gardens and Sea World properties at several locations. Anheuser-Busch has been overseen by a member of its founding family since 1852, when Eberhard Anheuser, a prosperous soap manufacturer in St. Louis, bought a failing brewery from Bavarian immigrant George Schneider. The brewery's cool underground caverns near the Mississippi River were conducive to good brewing, and Anheuser was determined to turn the business around, but he lacked experience in the industry. Therefore, he hired his son-in-law, Adolphus Busch, a recent German immigrant schooled in the art of brewing, as his general manager. Together, Anheuser and Busch approached the enterprise with an aggressive business strategy and knowledge in quality brewing, two factors that have informed Anheuser-Busch's history ever since. According to a popular company legend, Adolphus Busch obtained the recipe for his beer during a visit to a German monastery. There, monks provided him with a recipe and some of their brewer's yeast, the secret of their excellent beer. That recipe became the basis of Anheuser-Busch beers, and the original strain of yeast, allegedly preserved for years in Adolphus's ice cream freezer, remained in use in the 1990s. Although fictitious, the story highlighted two important philosophies at Anheuser-Busch: only the finest 'European' ingredients were to be used and the basic recipe would remain essentially unchanged. In 1853, Anheuser and Busch increased the rejuvenated brewery's capacity from 3,000 to 8,000 barrels per year and began to expand their sales effort into Texas and Louisiana, as well as their home state of Missouri. The beverage became increasingly popular, as cowboys reportedly deserted their beloved red-eye whiskey for the light Bohemian beer, which became known as Budweiser in 1891, when the company purchased the rights to the name from the Bohemian brewer of 'Budweis.' Budweiser's formula was enhanced by innovations in the brewing industry, particularly as pasteurization allowed for longer preservation periods. Moreover, newly invented refrigerated railroad cars permitted the transport of beer across state borders, and the bottling of beer allowed for easier distribution throughout the country. Regional brewers lost their advantage to large breweries such as Anheuser-Busch, which had found the means to supply beer to every state in the union. Despite the growth of its market, however, Anheuser-Busch still referred to itself as a 'regional brewery'--an institution that understood the distinct needs and tastes of local people. Anheuser gave over the day-to-day operations to Busch in the 1870s. The company continued to prosper, and its workforce increased. During his tenure, Busch initiated the concept of considering employees members of a family: cared for and nurtured by the company and expected to remain loyal to the company for a lifetime. Anheuser-Busch considered this unique relat