Small businesses like Ziggy’s Bar & Grill and Kata Robata have scratched Bud Light from their menus and have spread the word through social media, as response to HB 602’s recent death at the hands of Anheuser-Busch.
“We have ’86 Bud Light’ written on the door and people who got that, got it and it was hilarious,” Ziggy’s General Manager Taushah Crawford said.
The restaurants began the boycott when HB 602 died in the legislature. HB 602 would have allowed breweries to charge an admission fee to any visitor wishing to take a tour. The bill would have also allowed breweries to either gift or sell their craft beer to visitors. The provisions of the bill would have allowed Texas breweries to operate like wineries.
Anheuser-Busch intervened to stop the passage of the bill in the eleventh hour.
“[HB 602] has tried to go through a few times under different names and it probably would have gone through this time,” Kata Robata owner Josh Martinez said, “[Anheuser-Busch] has nothing to lose or to gain from it.”
While I doubt that this will amount to as much as a pimple on Anheuser-Busch’s ample posterior, it’s the principle that matters. I hope many other small businesses join with them.
abt HB 602