A 150-year-old beer brand is hitting a new sales stride despite the category, specifically lower-priced offerings, losing steam with younger drinkers.
Coors Banquet said its sales have steadily increased on a year-over-year basis over the past several years, with 28% growth last year compared to 2022. This is in contrast to the state of the beer market in general, which marked its lowest level of shipments to the U.S. in a quarter century in 2023, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights data. The brand says it is to be the fastest-growing beer brand in the country.
Alyssa Bush, Coors Banquet’s senior marketing manager, said the brand is benefiting from its legacy status as nostalgia marketing continues to prove lucrative.
“It’s really about the enduring timelessness that the brand and the beer has,” Bush said, pointing to the brand being seen in photographs held by celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Keith Richards, along with being featured in popular shows like “Stranger Things,” “Cobra Kai” and “Yellowstone.”
The brand launched a Legacy Collection set of beer cans and packaging this week — along with a collaboration with clothing brand Brixton — donning Coors Banquet logos from throughout its history.
“The packaging is inspired by Coors Banquet’s past, from the 1880’s, the 1940’s to the 1990’s,” Bush said. “It’s paying homage to that legacy with a modern twist.”
Molson Coors has experienced a significant upswing for its major beer brands over the past year. In February, the company reported 9.3% net sales growth, beating analyst predictions by overperforming in the beer category, despite CEO Gavin Hattersley’s focus on its “Beyond Beer” portfolio. Offerings like Coors Light, Coors Banquet and Miller Lite each saw double-digit volume growth in its most recent quarter, according to the company. Many attributed its success to the decline of rival Anheuser-Busch ever since a boycott of Bud Light began last spring.
But the Coors Banquet brewer is facing a labor dispute that could upend its production if it persists. Last month, roughly 420 of the brewer’s workers at a plant in Fort Worth, Texas, went on strike after the union representing them, the Teamsters, failed to reach a deal with the beverage giant for a new contract. The strike has continued for over a month since it began in late February.
In an emailed statement, Molson Coors chief communications officer Adam Collins said the company remains committed to reaching an agreement with the union, offering competitive wages and participating in roughly 40 negotiating sessions. Despite the strike, the company has continued making beer at the plant with the help of salaried employees and other company employees.
“We’re still brewing, packaging and shipping out of Fort Worth, we have exceeded all of our weekly production expectations during this time, and last week we actually set a daily production record since the strike began,” Collins said. “Our other five U.S. breweries are also absorbing extra production, and we deliberately built up distributor inventories earlier in the year.”
Negotiations between the two parties were called off last week after they failed to come to a contract agreement, with Molson Coors offering five cents more on top of its initial 99-cent-per-hour raise proposal for its workers, according to Teamsters. In a statement, Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said the union has no plans to end the strike until the company presents a “respectable contract.”
“Molson Coors doesn’t care about Texas workers or their hard labor or the sacrifices their families have made to make the company rich,” O’Brien said. “The corporate end game here is to try to drive the union out of the brewery in Texas. Molson Coors wants to break the workers.”
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