BudNet Tracks Your Suds

An anonymous reader writes "CNN is carrying a story about Budweiser's national internal sales tracking network called BudNET. It allows Anheuser-Busch to instantly track sales across the country, and 'If Anheuser-Busch loses shelf space in a store in Clarksville, Tennessee, they know it right away.' It brings up some interesting privacy issues, because according to the article 'The last time you bought a six-pack of Bud Light at the Piggly Wiggly, Anheuser servers most likely recorded what you paid, when that beer was brewed, whether you purchased it warm or chilled, and whether you could have gotten a better deal down the street.' Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."

Comments

Give me an Arrogant Bastard Ale any day..

[CharAznable]

Budweiser could stand to spend more on malt and hops instead of impressive IT systems... What's amazing is that they boast about using RICE on their beer!!! Rice is an adjunct that is used in beer to keep costs down and lighten up the body (read: make it more watery)

Re:Piggly-Wiggly?

[stevesliva]

Incidentally, Piggly-Wiggly was the first grocer to come up with the astounding idea of self-service grocery stores, rather than letting the clerk collect and package your purchases. Clarence Saunders even patented the idea.

Piggly-Wiggly's success led to a number of copycat chains, quite a few of which decided to also copy the astoundingly dumb naming convention in addition to the whole self-serve thing.

Re:Piggly-Wiggly?

[arnie_apesacrappin]

It's a southern thing. There were at one time Piggly-Wiggly knock-offs called Hoggly-Woggly. It's the same store as Kroger, Publix, Winn-Dixie or Meijer (but without clothes and other-non food goods). It just has a goofy name.

Nothing to see here...

[UncleGizmo]

First, to be clear, Bud doesn't know what 'you' bought. That would take them matching data from the credit card [assuming you purchased with a credit card], which they don't have access to, to the scanner sale [which only records what product was scanned]. All they are doing is making sure their product is available, all the time, and in the right product mix for the store/neighborhood.

A big problem in the beverage industry is 'out-of-stocks'. Most retailers use direct-store-delivery for beverages [bottlers put the stuff on trucks and tell the truck - sometimes in transit - where and how much to drop off at each store]. Before scanners, it could be days before an out-of-stock product was identified. Think about how much product moves off a shelf - per day, per store, per market - having no product on the shelf adds up quick.

The dollars manufacturers can lose due to out-of-stocks is huge. And retailers don't want empty space, and they don't want shoppers not finding their favorite product and going somewhere else. The manufacturer who figures out how to keep their merchandise in-stock efficiently will be a favorite of the retailer, especially if they are a big name like Bud, who also advertises a lot.

Companies like Bud use market research to determine the mix of products. Markets that have a higher Hispanic population may have a higher mix of beverages that cater to this group. But they don't know that 'you' specifically bought their product.

Nothing to see here...unless you're overly paranoid [but no one on /. is that way, right?]

Re:Wow you're right!

[Hrothgar The Great]

Wrong. I love beer as well, and I find nothing really wrong at all with the taste of cheap beer. I love a wide range of tastes of beer, and cheap commercial beer has a distinct taste, especially among different brands, and they are among many others I enjoy. I like microbrews as well, but I also like the taste of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Old Style because they do not taste like other beers I drink and I am often in the mood for them.

I do think it's snotty to crap on them because they're big and commercial, and I think you're all a bunch of god damn yuppies and beer snobs. No offense.

Re:Quite frankly...

[DHR]

I'd tend to agree, surely people don't prefer Bud by the taste, maybe they're just afraid to try something different? One of my favorite pub's (Jacks Bar, SF) has 80+ beers on tap, and if you ask the bartenders what the most popular beer is, guess what they'll say? Bud.

Re:Just pay with cash

[babyrat]

Don't know about other places, but all the stores here in Phoenix that I've been to don't check the info on your saver card 'application'. My dogs buy a lot of groceries - not sure where they take them though, because the address they used does not exist...

it's crappy by european standards, sure

[sbma44]

But at this point I think it's obvious that Americans don't drink the same kind of beer as Europeans. We seem to like light-bodied lagers a lot more. While bud uses rice (and corn), it uses it to produce a beer that's at least a solid example of, and perhaps the definition of, an American Lager. I've spoken to some folks who know a thing about brewing; they may not want to brew bud themselves, but they speak in respectful terms of the consistency between batches that Budweiser turns out. To do so on such a large scale is quite a trick.

I'm not personally a fan of Bud, but I think most of the people crapping on it in this thread are doing so out of simple elitism. Most likely prefer beers that have been marketed to them as "sophisticated" like the hopped-to-hell-and-back Heineken, or, god forbid, Amstel, which seems to trade entirely on a fake European heritage to excuse the fact that it tastes like licking a skunk.

Re:Wow you're right!

[drinkypoo]

The problem with budweiser isn't the fact that it's associated with rednecks. The problem with it (and with all other big name beers) is that it's brewed in giant vats and usually contains well over 50% adjuncts as opposed to barley; corn, rice, wheat, etc. All the big american beers are pilsners because pilsner is easy to brew and responds relatively well to the inclusion of adjuncts, which is what made it the de facto standard of bootleg beer during prohibition. After prohibition was repealed people just kept making pilsners, because americans were used to drinking them, and everyone who made real beer (apologies to the real pilsners out there) had gone out of business.

Microbrewing has brought about an American beer renaissance in which other styles of beer are being made again and sold at tolerably reasonable prices, though it still costs three or four times as much to drink good beer as crappy beer.