Is Market Growth on Tap for Mexico's Craft Beers? Lauren Villagran - SmartPlanet
go to original February 15, 2013

MEXICO CITY – The waiter brings a tall, salt-rimmed glass filled with two fingers of fresh-squeezed lime juice. He cracks open an icy Corona and moves to pour – but wait - will this michelada even be Mexican anymore?

Corona belongs to Grupo Modelo, whose pending sale to Belgium-based Anheuser-Busch InBev will leave Mexico’s two major beer makers in foreign hands. While the $20.1 billion deal hasn’t prompted the nationalistic outcry that it might have in the past, one corner of the market sees opportunity: the growing craft beer industry.

Mexico’s beer culture is primed for a shift in tastes, said Jaime Andreu Galvan, commercial director of Cerveceria Primus, one of Mexico’s up-and-coming microbreweries. “The only beer makers backed by Mexican capital will be artisan,” he said. “That matters to the Mexican consumer.”

Until recently, Mexican beer drinkers haven’t had many options.

Restaurants in Mexico typically sell one of the two dominant lines of beers – never both. Either Grupo Modelo’s brands are on the menu: Corona, Modelo Especial, Negra Modelo, Victoria. Or those belonging to Heineken-owned Cuauhtemoc-Moctezuma: Tecate, Indio, Bohemia and Dos Equis. At most cantinas, it’s rare to find any of the brews made by Mexico’s 40 craft beer makers.

Read the whole story at SmartPlanet

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