Bitter Brew

Knoedelseder wrote a history of Anheuser-Busch and the Busch family, covering five generations from the nineteenth-century founding to the 2008 sale to InBev.

The business history traces the company's growth: Adolphus Busch's use of pasteurisation and refrigerated rail to create the first national beer brand; survival through Prohibition by producing yeast, malt syrup and other products; the postwar expansion; August Busch III's transformation of the company into a marketing and distribution machine that reached roughly half the American market; the distributor network and the exclusivity arrangements that made it defensible; and the enormous advertising spending, particularly the Super Bowl campaigns.

The family history is the book's real subject. Knoedelseder documents the succession conflicts across generations, particularly August Busch III's removal of his own father from the chief executive position, and his later relationship with his son August Busch IV, whose personal difficulties and lack of authority within the company Knoedelseder covers in detail.

The ending is the acquisition. InBev's bid in 2008 found a company whose growth had stalled, whose share price had underperformed, whose board included family members and outsiders who were not aligned, and whose chief executive did not have the standing to organise a defence. The board accepted an increased offer.

The book is narrative and gossipy, with substantial attention to family behaviour that does not bear on the business. Its business content is real: the account of how the distributor network was built and defended, and of how a family-controlled company lost control through the erosion of its own share ownership and the failure of succession, is the useful part.