Anheuser-Busch’s roots run deep in St. Louis
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By Matthew Hathaway and Jeremiah McWilliams/St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS — On any given weekend, St. Louisans can catch a baseball game at Busch Stadium; see beer of the Busch name being brewed and bottled; and drink complimentary cups of the brew in the courtyard of the Grant’s Farm’s “Bauernhof.”
They can brunch at Bevo Mill, a South Side whimsy built by Anheuser-Busch on the eve of Prohibition to make saloon-going seem more respectable. Then they can work off that feast on a hike through the 7,000-acre August A. Busch Memorial Conservation Area in St. Charles County.
“The Busches built an empire here, and they did it their way,” said Sue Luepker, who with her husband, Marty, owns Al Smith’s Feasting Fox, originally called Busch’s Inn when it was built by the brewer. Part restaurant and part museum of St. Louis brewing history, the place takes part of its name from the jovial gargoyles that guard the company’s Soulard brewery.
But those comical foxes can’t scare off the pigeons, let alone a hungry rival circling One Busch Place. InBev of Belgium, the world’s biggest brewer, on Wednesday bid $46.3 billion for Anheuser-Busch Cos., the first step of a long-rumored deal that would end the company’s 156-year run of independence and shake one of St. Louis’ oldest pillars of stability.
“Here we go again,” said Clarence Harmon, who was St. Louis mayor in 2001 when American Airlines gobbled Trans World Airlines.
Losing the brewer’s headquarters wouldn’t be economically devastating for the region as long as a new owner kept the local brewery open, Harmon said. But it would be a massive blow to the city’s prestige, he said. “Having the company here, it’s like bragging rights.”
The company’s sheer brawn conveys bragging rights. Anheuser-Busch has about 6,000 employees in the St. Louis area, an annual Missouri payroll of $518 million and pays more than $37 million in state and local taxes and fees.
Anheuser-Busch’s sales rank third-highest among public companies in the area; its profits are fatter than all but one: Emerson.
Losing that economic heft would set St. Louis back dramatically, said Stuart Greenbaum, former dean of Washington University’s Olin Business School.
“It’s economic power, it’s jobs, it’s the ability to support amenities, it’s the ability to stage national and international events,” said Greenbaum. “The ability to be a Chicago instead of a Dubuque is what’s at stake here.”
But dry data can’t trace Anheuser-Busch’s deep imprint on St. Louis’ personality and identity. Budweiser radio commercials end with an announcer sounding off “St. Louis, Missouri” — a reminder that the city is the home of the world’s best-selling beer. Anheuser-Busch has made its Clydesdales, such as those lodged in the brewery’s stables, into advertising symbols. The brewery’s guided tours draw about 350,000 visitors each year.
“It’s a whole bunch of symbolism that’s important to the community,” said Don Phares, professor emeritus of economics and public policy at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. “If that were to change, I think it would be a substantial loss to the community.”
Other than beer, sports is the brewer’s broadest link to the St. Louis area.
In 1953, then-Cardinals owner Fred Saigh Jr., convicted of tax evasion and engulfed in legal problems, was forced to sell the team. After rejecting more lucrative offers from groups in Houston and Milwaukee, Saigh sold the club to August A. “Gussie” Busch Jr. for $3.75 million in April 1953.
The brewery boss also purchased Sportsman’s Park from St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck, who would move his team to Baltimore at the end of the 1953 season.
While renovating the aging edifice, Busch planned to rename the ballpark “Budweiser Stadium.” But major league baseball commissioner Ford Frick did not appreciate the concept of naming a ballpark after a beer, and the idea was quashed. No matter, Busch used the back door. He renamed the old yard “Busch Stadium” and a short time later, the brewery introduced Busch beer.
Later, the brewer spearheaded the movement to build a new stadium and make it the hub of a downtown renaissance. Civic Center Busch Memorial Stadium opened in May 1966. The ballpark gave way to the new Busch Stadium in 2006.
As chairman, president and CEO of the Cardinals, Gussie Busch was the executive face of the franchise from 1953 until his death in 1989. In that time the team won six National League championships, in 1964, 1967, 1968, 1982, 1985 and 1987. It won three World Series titles, in 1964, 1967 and 1982.
Think of the brewer, and St. Louis buildings and three successive baseball stadiums come to mind. But there are dozens of edifices and institutions, wings and galleries named after the company and members of the family that runs it.
In higher education alone, there’s the Busch Student Center and Anheuser-Busch Institute at St. Louis University; 107-year-old Busch Hall at Washington University; and the Busch School of Business Administration at Harris-Stowe State University.
Not all of the company’s contributions to St. Louis’ civic life are that academic. For instance, there’s the brewery’s 1955 gift to the St. Louis Zoo of eight female elephants — named after women of the Busch clan, of course. Clara, the last of the herd, died in 2007.
High-profile corporate departures or takeovers — GenAmerica, Southwestern Bell, Boatmen’s Bancshares, McDonnell Douglas, Ralston Purina, TWA, May Department Stores and A.G. Edwards — have rocked St. Louis’ confidence and sense of status.
But Anheuser-Busch prospered and embraced the role as the public face of St. Louis, a symbol of the city on par with the Gateway Arch and the Cardinals.
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There never has been any other company in town that was known just by its type of business — nothing else like ‘the Brewery,“’ said Tom Schlafly, a lawyer and co-founder of St. Louis Brewery Inc. “No one ever called May ‘the Department Store Company.’ It’s almost like they’re royalty.”
Now, you can hear it on the street and sense it in people’s questions on blogs: This city fears the day when the King of Beers may be toppled.
In February, the auditorium at Anheuser-Busch headquarters was packed with brewery employees, executives and top officials of the Department of Homeland Security. Dave Peacock, vice president of marketing, stepped up to the podium to tout Anheuser-Busch’s good deed: a $250,000 donation to the local Red Cross, seed money for a new emergency preparedness program.
It was a big show, with Anheuser-Busch in a familiar place: center stage, the deep pockets behind charity and the unofficial big brother of the area’s businesses.
“Along with the leadership, they provided the support,” said Joe White, chief executive of the American Red Cross St. Louis Area Chapter. “Anheuser-Busch has been a tremendous assistance in all facets.” But it isn’t just the Red Cross. The BackStoppers Police Officers and Firefighters Fund, Habitat for Humanity ... the list goes on. Last year, Anheuser-Busch gave approximately $10 million to charities in the St. Louis region.
“Anheuser-Busch is just phenomenally supportive,” said Gary Dollar, chief executive of United Way of Greater St. Louis. His group received pledges totaling more than $3 million — the most from any company — from Anheuser-Busch and its employees in the fall fundraising campaign. “You can really count on the people of A-B.”
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Initially, St. Louis bluebloods wouldn’t accept the Busches because of their new money, strange names and unseemly business. But the family fought its way into area high society and, ultimately, came to sit atop it.
Consider the family’s personal recreation. Denied membership at the premier area country club, August A. Busch Sr. built what would become the 168-acre Sunset Country Club in south St. Louis County. In 1927, August A. “Gussie” Busch Jr. founded the Bridlespur Hunt, a fox-hunting club in Huntleigh. The club is now in rural Lincoln County. Recent generations of Busches — along with cousins such as the Orthweins and von Gontards — have taken to polo, the ultimate game of the leisure class.
To Schlafly, whose 17-year-old company makes beers of the same name, the St. Louis version of Camelot was on display every time Gussie Busch would wave to the ballpark masses from his perch on the Clydesdale-pulled beer wagon.
“What was amazing was the reaction in the bleachers, where these guys making six or seven dollars an hour would rush to buy beer to toast ‘Gussie’ the billionaire ... If Diana was the People’s Princess, he was the People’s King.”
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With his penchant for yachts, thoroughbreds and private railcars, it’s hard to think of Gussie Busch as a man of the people. He was, however, a big believer in the company’s longstanding motto: “Making friends is our business.”
To win new friends among the working class, he did more than buy the Cardinals.
He allowed Joe Six-Pack the chance to bring his own family for free to Grant’s Farm, the 281-acre estate built decades earlier by Adolphus Busch. An immediate hit, the unusual combination of game preserve, presidential history and Gemutlichkeit has drawn more than 24 million visitors.
The Busches worked as hard as they played. Gussie’s son, August Busch III, hired a bevy of MBA graduates and waged battle against rival Miller Brewing Co. of Milwaukee.
The Third demanded excellence and got it, keeping Anheuser-Busch on top of the U.S. brewing industry every year. His son, August A. Busch IV, who now runs the company, is pushing the company to grow faster.
“They worked your tail off, let you work to 100 percent of your ability,” said Bill Finnie, a former A-B strategic planner who is now an adjunct professor of strategy at Washington University. “We kicked butt, and we enjoyed the process.” The question now is whether Anheuser-Busch, long dogged by slow growth in the United States, will have to bow to the $46.3 billion pressure of InBev’s offer.
The city doesn’t want shareholders to ignore these contributions. Jeff Rainford, chief of staff to Mayor Francis Slay, said city officials planned to send a letter to area shareholders, pointing out the contributions of an independent Anheuser-Busch — including concerts and more than $12 million in city taxes. The letter will urge investors to take the local impact — as well as the company’s share price — into account.
Missouri Historical Society President Robert Archibald said the disappearance of Anheuser-Busch would be an especially heavy loss for the St. Louis metropolitan psyche. Archibald notes the company is the most prominent vestige of 19th century, German St. Louis. And it’s the nexus of “the two things St. Louis historically has cared about most: beer and baseball,” he said.
But the company is even bigger than that, Archibald said.
“Anheuser-Busch seems like the last one standing in a city that already feels it has lost too many big corporate names,” he said. “And the brewery isn’t just a company, or even a family. It’s part of our civic identity.”
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(Dan O’Neill of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.)
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