Refrigerated railcars turned a failing St. Louis brewery into Budweiser country
Adolphus Busch borrowed the name Budweiser from a Bohemian town his beer had nothing to do with. What made it America's first national brand was logistics: pasteurisation, mechanical cooling, and a growing fleet of chilled railroad cars that could carry bottled lager far beyond St. Louis.
The brewery began in 1852 as George Schneider's Bavarian Brewery in south St. Louis. Money troubles followed, and in 1860 a pharmacist, William D'Oench, and a wealthy soap maker, Eberhard Anheuser, bought it on the edge of bankruptcy. Anheuser's daughter Lilly married Adolphus Busch, a German-born wholesaler, who joined as a salesman after the Civil War, bought out D'Oench in 1869, and became president when his father-in-law died in 1880.
Busch was the first American brewer to pasteurise beer, the first to use mechanical refrigeration and cooled rail cars, and the first to bottle on a large scale. Output leapt from 31,500 barrels in 1875 to over 200,000 in 1881. To control the whole chain he set up his own refrigerator car company in 1878 and a short railway in 1887 to shunt wagons around the brewery. He was a showman too, sending thousands of prints of Custer's Last Fight to bars in 1896, the year Michelob launched.
Prohibition hit hard, and the company survived on yeast, malt extract, ice cream and Bevo, a near beer it had introduced in 1908. It recovered to become the largest American brewer by 1957, later running parks, can plants and breweries in China and Britain.
Family control ended in 2008, when InBev, a Belgian-Brazilian brewer, launched a hostile bid. After first rejecting it, the board agreed to 70 dollars a share, almost 52 billion in total, creating the world's biggest brewer. The new owners slashed costs, reclaimed 1200 BlackBerry phones, stopped free beer for staff and park visitors, and told suppliers they would wait 120 days rather than 30 to be paid. The theme parks, including three SeaWorlds, were sold to Blackstone.
Source: Anheuser-Busch
