This is a developing story, check back for updates.
Following a turbulent few months in the wake of conservative backlash and plummeting Bud Light sales — and the beer’s subsequent fall from grace as the U.S.’s top-selling brew — Anheuser-Busch announced their decision today to lay off two percent of its U.S. workforce, Beer Business Daily reports.
In a statement from A-B chief executive officer Brendan Whitworth, the company made “a very difficult but necessary [decision] to eliminate a number of positions across our corporate organization.” According to the CEO, the restructuring will help to “ensure that [the] organization continues to be set for future long-term success.”
The statement shares that while layoffs will be seen at every level in the corporate organization, total layoffs will account for less than two percent of A-B’s total employee population. It also reveals that frontline employees will not be impacted whatsoever, a choice likely made to uphold the company’s June pledge to provide financial assistance and job protection to the frontline workers affected by Bud Light’s falling sales, including distributors, wholesalers, and transporters.
In the company statement, Whitworth says that “these corporate structure changes will enable [their] teams to focus on what [they] do best — brewing great beer for everyone and earning [their] place in the moments that matter.”
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