Tag: beverages

Photo by Joe WilcoxJul 10, 20239:55 pm

Delivering or Removing?

I don’t drink beer—or any alcoholic beverages, for that matter—yet for the second time in a fortnight, I write about boycotted Bud Light. The first followed a discarded can’s meaning as July 4th approached and Anheuser-Busch offered $15 off cases of 15, essentially bringing the purchase price to zero, or near it. Desperation makes sense: For the week ending July 1, 2023, sales slumped 31.2 percent year over year. Yikes!

In what I would call a pathetic plea, Anheuser-Busch chief executive Brendan Whitworth asks beer drinkers to have heart and think about the company’s 65,000 employees; no sales, no work. I’m all choked up; give me a minute to grab a hanky. Because I know what corporation would be so heartless as to put profits before employees? (Someone grab a bucket to catch all the dripping sarcasm.)

Photo by Joe WilcoxJun 26, 202310:32 pm

‘Hey, I Thought There was a Boycott!’

So said I to my wife when we passed by the discarded can today. I don’t drink beer—or any other alcoholic beverages—and am only aware of the Bud Light boycott because it blasted across every avenue and alley along the Information Superhighway (yeah, call me archaic), starting in April 2023. Anheuser-Busch made the marketing mistake of aligning with a transgender TikToker.

Sales plummeted, and the brewer stumbled into “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” territory. Distancing damage control precipitated a backlash among the Rainbow coalition of gender-identifying letters. Along the spectrum of staunch conservatives to prickly progressives, Anheuser-Busch managed to offend just about everyone who drank Bud Light, which was the most popular beer in the United States before the fiasco’s start.

Photo by Joe WilcoxSep 9, 20227:42 pm

Not One Crisis, But Two

Two days ago, I looked upon something surprising inside the Grocery Outlet, located in San Diego neighborhood Talmadge: An empty display case for Mexican Coca-Cola. Shall we blame supply chain disruptions that every fear-mongering pundit has blabbered about for months? The beverage, sweetened with cane sugar instead of corn syrup, is popularly stocked by many grocery stores in this area of SoCal.

But far more unsettling is the price. Mexican Coke, sold in glass bottles, is perennially priced 99 cents. A buck sixty-nine puts inflation and rising food/beverage prices into piercing perspective. That’s a 70.7 percent increase, by the way. Yikes!

Photo by Joe WilcoxJan 27, 20228:11 pm

Don’t Drive Plastered

Is there some metaphor or deliberate message here? Hodad’s is a popular burger joint in Ocean Beach, Calif.—if the persistent waiting lines are any indication (unless seating is inadequate; I wouldn’t know). As you can see from the Featured Image, the restaurant’s vintage Volkswagen minivan is plastered with stickers, such that anyone sensible shouldn’t drive it. Safety first!

The eatery also sells craft beer. Being plastered is a euphemism for intoxication, in which state no responsible person should be behind the wheel of a vehicle. So is it coincidence that a place that brews beer parks its plastered VW nearby? I should have asked someone when in OB on Nov. 17, 2021 carrying Leica Q2. Photo vitals, aperture manually set: f/5.6, ISO 100, 1/500 sec, 28mm; 12:30 p.m. PST.

Photo by Joe WilcoxAug 30, 20219:03 pm

Mexican Coke

While walking along Adams Ave., just past Park Blvd, moving towards the overlook, in University Heights, I passed by an empty glass bottle of Coca-Cola. Oh, hell, why not take a photo? So I turned […]

Society by Joe WilcoxMay 25, 20219:24 pm

I Won’t Go Soft on Hard Seltzer

Before the Wilcoxes relocated to California from Maryland some thirteen-and-a-half years ago, I generally replaced soda with a couple tablespoons of apple juice mixed with a 12-ounce can of seltzer (e.g., carbonated water). But finding the bubbly proved to be really challenging in SoCal. A few stores stocked seltzer in quart-size plastic bottles but no cans and for considerably higher price than what we paid back East.

Then came LaCroix’s bold brand turnaround early in the last decade. Packaging makeover and consumer rage against sugary soda won over mainstream Millennials, ultimately leading to a seltzer surge—whether measured by increased number of brands, flavors, or sales. That’s good for me, now a drinker of straight seltzer; no juice added by my hands or artificial flavors by bottlers.

Living by Joe WilcoxOct 16, 20177:50 pm

LaCroix Sticker Shock Gives Me Nose Bleeds

What a difference branding makes for sale-pricing. Before LaCroix became a posh, bubbly brand for environmentally-minded, organic-obsessed, uncompromising-to-spend-less Whole Foods sundry shoppers, my wife and I regularly purchased the seltzer. We preferred the no-flavor water for its effervescence and low-sodium content. I remember when, going back just five years, the local Ralph’s sold cases of 24 12-oz cans for $4.99 during summer months.

But now that LaCroix is the Apple of bubbly waters, those cans cost lots more. Today, in the same Ralph’s the exact quantity deeply discounted is twice as much—and that’s helluva savings when one case of eight typically sells for what I used to pay for 24.