Confirm or refute this quote about beer sales.

[pkbites]

According to Wikipedia:
**
Until the mid-1970s, Schaefer Beer was the world’s best selling beer before ceding the top spot to Budweiser.**

I’m having a hard time coming up with statistics over this, as most searches result in opinions-disguised-as-facts by drunks and disinformation from brewers.

[Peanuthead]

I don’t have a cite for you but I can tell you that back in the 1950s, and 60s in NYC it was one of the most popular beers. The other two being Rheigngold (sp?) and Ballentine. Every tavern had it on tap and in bottle and cans. Are any of them still operating? Haven’t seen them in ages. If my memory serves me correctly they were all a lot more hoppy than today’s typical beers. (Bud, Old Style, Coors, etc.)

Side note: I still have a Schaefer beer can opener. Before the advent of the “pop top” you needed a churchkey to open your can and they used to give them away when you bought a six pack.

[Nunzio_Tavulari]

Bud Light has been the best seller since 1982, Budweiser was #2 for a long time but now swaps back and forth with Coors Light.

This would support the contention that Bud was small potatoes until the late Fifties:

Beginning with the opening of the Newark, N.J. facility in 1951, August Jr. created a national network of nine breweries. Under his leadership, beer sales increased from 3 million barrels to more than 34 million barrels, and corporate diversification was extended to include family entertainment, industrial products, real estate and can manufacturing. In 1957, Anheuser-Busch became the leading U.S. brewer, a position it retains today.

edit to say: The 2009 documentary Beer Wars would almost certainly have the answer to this question

[UDS]

Googling offers two variants on this claim.

1. As stated above, Schaefer was the world’s best-selling beer immediately before Budweiser, which acquired the record in 1971.

2. Schaefer was the world’s best-selling beer at some point in the first half of the twentieth century. Budweiser, until recently regarded as the world’s best-selling beer, only acquired that position in 1971.

So far, I haven’t seen either version of the claim being backed with much in the way of verifiable detail. (How much of the stuff was actually sold? We’re not told.) But, until comparatively recently, beer markets were highly localised. It’s quite possible that the dominant beer in a populous region of the US would have been the world’s best-selling beer, even if most beer-drinkers in the world had never heard of it.

[UDS]

@Nunzio_Tavulari

Bud Light has been the best seller since 1982

Apparently it’s recently been overtaken by a brew called “Snow”, which is not distributed outside China, but nevertheless is the world’s largest selling beer based on its domestic sales alone.

[BeaMyra]

From the Internet it seem possible the claim is true. It appears that Schaefer was sold dirt cheap and it has been around since the 1840s.

From Beerhistory.com

In 1938 Schaefer joined that exclusive group of brewers that sold 1,000,000 barrels in a year, and the 2,000,000 mark was passed in 1944, two years after the company celebrated its 100th birthday in 1842. Sales continued strong throughout the 1940’s and, to increase capacity, Schaefer purchased the former Beverwyck Brewery Co. in Albany, New York in 1950. They remained a two-plant company until 1961 when, with an eye toward expanding into large areas of the mid-west,

[jjimm]

@UDS

Apparently it’s recently been overtaken by a brew called “Snow”, which is not distributed outside China, but nevertheless is the world’s largest selling beer based on its domestic sales alone.

I’ve had that. It’s muck.

[UDS]

@jjimm

I’ve had that. It’s muck.

So is Bud Lite. So is Bud. And so, I would hazard a guess, was Schaefer.

You don’t get to be the world’s best-selling beer by being a really first-class, memorable beer. You get to be TWBSB by being cheap, and by having a bland taste which will neither surprise nor offend anyone, in much the same way that McDonald’s gets to be the world’s largest restaurant chain. It’s not really about the food.

Or, in other words, from a beer-drinker’s point of view, being the world’s best-selling beer is not a selling point. The brewery stockholders will like it, though.

[Measure_for_Measure]

Don’t read too much into that claim. In 1990 the top 2 beer firms in the US shares 67% of the market. In 1970 they only amounted to 30%. Admittedly, I’m referring to brewers and not brands.

Source Industry Studies by Larry Duetsch

Schaefer’s website makes no reference to this sort of claim: http://www.schaefer-beer.com/history/default.aspx
It does say that its plants were in Manhattan, Albany, NY and in 1971 Allentown, PA. So I guess the brand was popular in NYC – beer used to be a local product.

Beer sales are driven by a small share of a firm’s customers, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a cheap brand had the highest market penetration.

[Southern_Yankee]

All I can add was that when I grew up in NJ in the late 60s/early 70s, Schaefer was my dad’s beer and I believe they were a long-time sponsor of the NY Mets. I never really noticed Budweiser until later in the 70s. I distinctly recall a fantastic Schaefer TV commercial where a pair of hands carved a beer mug out of a block of ice and then poured a Schaefer into it. Schaefer is the one beer to have, when you’re having more than one…

[Fleetwood]

@pkbites

According to Wikipedia:
**
Until the mid-1970s, Schaefer Beer was the world’s best selling beer before ceding the top spot to Budweiser.**

I’m having a hard time coming up with statistics over this, as most searches result in opinions-disguised-as-facts by drunks and disinformation from brewers.

I had always believed that Schlitz held that position.

[DrFidelius]

As Measure points out, there were many more regional brewers back in the day. It is not as if the “Best Selling Beer in the World” had anything like the market penetration that today’s mega-brewers enjoy.
Shaeffer was number one because it was the cheap, daily beer for the New York metropolitan area, while being available and cheap elsewhere in the country.
My father never forgave them for changing their brewing method.

[RealityChuck]

@Southern_Yankee

All I can add was that when I grew up in NJ in the late 60s/early 70s, Schaefer was my dad’s beer and I believe they were a long-time sponsor of the NY Mets. I never really noticed Budweiser until later in the 70s. I distinctly recall a fantastic Schaefer TV commercial where a pair of hands carved a beer mug out of a block of ice and then poured a Schaefer into it. Schaefer is the one beer to have, when you’re having more than one..

Rheingold was the original beer of the Mets (and Ballantine was the Yankees beer). Though I think Schaefer took over in the 70s.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Southern_Yankee

Schaefer is the one beer to have, when you’re having more than one..

This slogan is legendary in ad history. The implication is that the Schaefer drinker is a lush who’s going to down an entire sixpack or more at one time and Schaefer recognizes this by being designed to gulped in quantity rather than sipped and tasted. The audience for the beer know exactly what the ad meant. It was the first beer to aim itself at drunks, which is how you get to be number one in sales.

[11811]

@Southern_Yankee

<snip> Schaefer is the one beer to have, when you’re having more than one..

Schaefer pleasure doesn’t fade even when you workday’s done
The most rewarding flavor in this man’s world for people who are having fun
Schaefer is the one beer to have, when you’re having more than one

[TriPolar]

Schaefer was very popular up until the early 70s. The overall market was far more competitive then. Budweiser started a major marketing effort to become dominant, and took great steps toward being a national brand. That was significant. Most breweries maintained strength in limited geographic areas and had limited ability to distribute outside of that. A large part of the Bud effort was to make sure it was available at every bar and restaurant.

[gazpacho]

@UDS

So is Bud Lite. So is Bud. And so, I would hazard a guess, was Schaefer.

Schaefer is really bad or at least it was in the mid eighties. It is a few steps down from Bud, Miller, Coors etc. I drank it in high school. Well not drank the only way to consume it was with a beer bong so you did not have to taste it for long.

[TriPolar]

@gazpacho

Schaefer is really bad or at least it was in the mid eighties. It is a few steps down from Bud, Miller, Coors etc. I drank it in high school. Well not drank they only way to consume it was with a beer bong so you did not have to taste it for long.

As the Schaefer brand dwindled, I heard complaints from several fans that any place still carrying it had to keep it on the shelves for a long time. Your experience may have been with some pretty stale beer. In the 70s in PA, there were a huge number of beer brands available, including some disgusting local brands that sold well because of their low price. Back then (pre-1976 when I gave up drinking for a while) a case of Bud cans ran around about $5. Cheap brands like Iron City might be as low as $3.50 a case. Michelob was the high end, sometime $7.50 a case. Rolling rock was about $4 and change for a case of ‘pony’ bottles, which I think were only 8 or 9 ounces a bottle. But as Bud was ascending, it was obvious at the Beverage Stores (the only places you could buy a case of beer in PA back then) that the stacks of cases of lesser known beers weren’t depleting very fast.

[kayaker]

@UDS

You don’t get to be the world’s best-selling beer by being a really first-class, memorable beer. You get to be TWBSB by being cheap,

And that’s just sad.

I have been drinking really good beer lately at a place that is making a name for itself locally as a “beer snob hangout”. I shared a bottle of Sam Adam’s Utopias with a group of guys who each kicked in $20 for a jigger or so.

Yet when I asked what they sell the most of, I was told whatever six-pack they have priced the cheapest.

[pulykamell]

@Fleetwood

I had always believed that Schlitz held that position.

Yes, that’s what I’ve heard countless times. Let’s check the Internets…

From Wikipedia:

Leader in the industry: 1900–1982

The company flourished through much of the 1900s, starting in 1902 when the production of one million barrels of beer surpassed Pabst’s claim as the largest brewery in the world. Schlitz was continuously in competition as one of the top breweries in America for the next 70 years. While prohibition forced the suspension of alcoholic brewing, the company changed its name from Brewing Company to Beverage Company and adapted its slogan to “The drink that made Milwaukee Famous.”

Popularity of Schlitz’s namesake beer, along with the introduction of value priced Old Milwaukee in 1955, kept the brewery on a strong financial footing. However, changes implemented in the early 1970s led to its eventual fall. Faced with the need to meet large volume demands while also cutting the cost of production, the brewing process for Schlitz’s flagship Schlitz beer was changed in the early 1970s. The primary change involved using high-temperature fermentation instead of the traditional method, and also substituted less-expensive extracts rather than traditional ingredients.[6] Schlitz also experimented with a continuous fermentation process.[7] even designing and building a new Baldwinsville, New York, brewery around the process. The reformulated product resulted in a beer that not only lost much of the flavor and consistency of the traditional formula but spoiled more quickly, rapidly losing public appeal.

Schlitz remained the No. 2 brewery in America as late as 1976, but the ongoing formula changes implemented in an effort to keep cutting costs continued the downfall.

It sounds to me like the OP is talking about Schlitz, not Schaefer.