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Looks like the party is over in Canada, where Labatt Brewing has announced plans to end a beloved and long-standing retiree perk – FREE BEER FOR LIFE. There goes our plans to move to up north!
Founded in 1847 in London, Ontario, Labatt has pretty much defined mainstream Canadian beer for decades. In 1979 Labatt Blue was crowned as the top-selling beer in the country.
Back In that era Labatt was an iconic Canadian staple and it was not uncommon to see their beers served freely at breakfast along with indigenous bacon and moose steaks and (of course) pancakes.
Long the largest brewer in Canada, many of this frozen region’s residents have built life-long careers working at Labatt. And with a pension package that promised a regular allotment of “beer for life” they finally had something meaningful to live for.
But now sadly, that gravy train is coming to an end.
The seeds which eventually led to an end of “free beer for life” may have been planted back in 1995 when the company was sold to Interbrew a Belgian-based brewing company.
In 2004 Interbrew merged with Brazilian brewer AmBev and became InBev, which at the time was the largest brewer in the world by volume, with a 13% global market share. And in 2008 InBev merged with Anheuser-Busch to form Anheuser-Busch InBev, the global entity that we know today.
The reason reportedly given for this perk’s impending phase-out was predictable…Evidently the cost of providing all their retirees with enough beer to drink their way through their lonely days had simply grown too costly.
And given that Canada remains an afterthought (at best) for most educated Americans, the company perhaps gambled that the outrage could be largely contained to its less-populated Provinces.
Mob violence is a very real possibility.
Reports of armed turrets and 12 foot electrified barriers going up at all Labatt facilities remain unconfirmed, but we expect that heightened security may be the new reality for this once proud Canadian brewing institution.
Labatt Header credit: MTL Blog
