Anheuser-Busch Heir Wants to Make Bud Light ‘Great Again,’ Offers to Buy it Back

Billy Busch, the heir to the Anheuser-Busch brand, weighed in on the ongoing controversy surrounding his family’s former owned-and-operated beer line with an offer to buy the Bud Light back from the parent company.

“I urge that company, InBev, If they don’t want that brand any longer sell it back to the Busch family. Sell it to me,” Busch said during an interview on the conservative news entertainment show Tomi Lahren is Fearless. “I’ll be the first in line to buy that brand back from you. And we’ll make that brand great again.”

Busch's family sold Anheuser-Busch to InBev back in 2008, but the heir has made it clear he thinks he could turn the brand’s reputation around. 

Since early spring, Anheuser-Busch, and brand Bud Light in particular, have seen declining sales following a culture war that broke out after the company sent transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney a customized celebrating the first anniversary of her transition. AB-InBev reported a 14% decline in overall sales to U.S. retailers in the second quarter of this year.

According to Busch, the problem lies with the company heads being out of touch with their customers.

“I think I think InBev doesn’t understand who their core drinker is,” he said. “It’s a Brazilian-based company that really doesn’t live here in America.”

He said in the company’s effort to rebrand as inclusive and move away from its “fratty” customer base, they ended up isolating some of their essential customers, which Busch called a “big mistake.”

“When you are a foreign company, and you rely on these woke students that are coming out of these woke colleges to do your advertising for you, you’re making a big mistake,” he said. “You need to go out there and understand who your core customer is.”

Busch is the great-grandson of Adolphus Busch, who co-founded Anheuser-Busch with his father-in-law, Eberhard Anheuser, in 1852.

His family, Busch said, understood who they brewing for.

“They knew who their drinkers were,” Busch said. “They were with the bar owners and the restaurant owners and the liquor store owners and talking to these people day in and day out. Even my dad at 89 years old, 90 years old, he was still going to the bars selling Budweiser back in those days, in the ‘80s.”

Whether AB-InBev will take the heir up on his offer remains to be seen.