Bad management decisions ruined the #1 selling beer in the U.S. and it never gained its position back.
And they did it right when the light beer Nazis were inudating the airwaves and corrupting everyone’s palate with watery goo.
Love it or hate it, Schlitz did have a unique flavor that was unmistakable for anything else.
This month Pabst will cease production of Schlitz and it’s a damn shame. Another American institution gone to the ages.
I used to occasionally go to a bar in the 90s that still had 35 cent tap beer. Schlitz was the best choice, so I drank it back then.
It was nice being able to drink for an extended time and have leaving a fiver be a good tip.
As to the beer itself, well it wasn’t even as good as Bud, but that bar didn’t have Bud. I understand I only drank the cheaper version of Schlitz though and not the classic recipe. They cheapen out in the 60s or 70s IIRC.
ETA: One of the 3 beers was Schaefer,
That was definitely a big part of their decline. They did a series of cost-cutting reformulations in the 1970s, which worsened the taste of the beer, and culminated in a disastrous reformulation in 1976, where they had to recall 10 million cans and bottles.
Watch the short video in the OP.
OK, that was well done. Explained it and made the point nice and fast.
Good lord. Did they do taste testing with the new beer at all? One focus group would have told them it was a horrendous idea
They took something that wasn’t broke and tried to fix it.
I’m not a huge Schlitz drinker. I’d drink it on occasion when at a place that served it as I never drink out what I drink at home (boring).
Cafe Lulu on the crazy southeast side had it on tap. Wasn’t bad on draught. Cleveland Pub had it in glass bottles or cans. Glass bottles is the way to go when there isn’t tap.
Speaking as a market researcher: a number of companies have engaged in repeated cost-cutting moves on their products, which one of my old bosses called “creeping incrementalism.” Each time you switch from one ingredient to a cheaper one, the taste might get a little bit worse, but not enough for most people to be able to notice it in a blind taste test. But, go through several rounds of that, and the resulting product tastes nothing like the original.
It may also have been that Schlitz management rationalized that they might lose some market share, but make it up in better profits. Either way, they made themselves into a literal textbook case of poor management.
After my first Schlitz, I thought it tasted like its name without the L. I won’t miss it.
But others will and the loss of a long time American name brand is not a good thing.
You may not be old enough to know how huge Schlitz was at one time but I am. Like the loss of Oldsmobile and Pontiac these old namesakes helped make America great and their demise should not be taken lightly just because it wasn’t your cup of tea.
I don’t buy it. Oldsmobile and Buick were the same cars when they dropped Olds. So no real loss at that time, the loss had already happened.
Schlitz hasn’t apparently been Schlitz for almost 50 years. It had a good run, but that run was over long ago.
Around 1975 or 1976 – just as Schlitz was beginning to fade – my cousins’ paternal grandfather (not related to me, as our mothers were sisters), who was a bit of a card, and definitely a classic Wisconsin character, gave us each a big plastic button, clearly made as promotional items by Schlitz for St. Patrick’s Day.
Only in Wisconsin, in the 1970s, was it socially acceptable for a 10-year-old to be wearing this. 
What was the Buick version of the Alero?
Buick Skylark
They got a bit of product placement in one of John Updike’s “Bech” novels: the title character tells a receptionist his last name is spelled “like the beer, but with an H,” and it somehow gets written down as “Schlitzeh.”
You may be thinking of the Century. Which was slightly similar but not the same as the Alero. The Skylark wasn’t anything like it.
Either way, it’s a shame for long time American brands to go under because of piss poor management.
Is the voice over AI, a David Attenborough impressionist or ?
Laverne and Shirley famously worked at “Shotz” brewery.
brian
And somehow, the lesson was lost on Coke when it reformulated and introduced New Coke a decade later. At least Coca-Cola reversed its decision before the company could go under.
Schlitz was never a power player in St. Louis because of the overwhelming presence of Anheuser-Busch,. But the beer did have one glorious, shining moment in the sun when the St. Louis Cardinals (owned by A-B at the time) fired the famous Harry Caray.
Actually, it was a bit of a different lesson with New Coke; it was a case study which I was able to learn from in real time when I was in business school.
Coke had been losing market share to Pepsi (and its superior marketing campaigns) for years, so they decided that they should make a re-formulation which would let them steal share from Pepsi – and, thus, came up with a formula that was closer to Pepsi’s taste profile.
New Coke outperformed Pepsi in their taste tests, but their focus group research – which they decided to disregard – showed that there was a minority of current Coke drinkers who not only did not prefer the new formula, but who indicated that they would stop drinking Coke with the new formula. They underestimated the impact and influence that that vocal segment would have on the acceptance of the new formula among current Coke drinkers.