Popular gay bar drops Anheuser-Busch as top company exec makes refreshing admission: 'An important wake-up call'

A famous gay bar in downtown Minneapolis will stop selling Anheuser-Busch products over the company's handling of the Bud Light boycott.

The Saloon, open since 1977, announced Monday that it severed ties with Anheuser-Busch and will begin selling beer from local breweries instead. The bar is upset Anheuser-Busch did not lean into supporting the LGBTQ community when it came under fire for sponsoring transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney.

"I'm so protective of doing business with people who have integrity and don't get into an anti-queer agenda," John Moore, owner of the bar, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

In a formal statement, Moore explained:

Anheuser-Busch had an opportunity to support a marginalized community in a way that few other corporations have attempted, but they abandoned that direction. We view that as unacceptable.

This is not the first LGBTQ establishment to turn on Anheuser-Busch. Last month, the 2Bears Tavern Group, which owns four "LGBTQIA+ establishments" in the Chicago area, announced that its establishments would be "discontinuing Anheuser-Busch InBev products as a result of the brewer’s anti-transgender actions and statements."

After Bud Light was dethroned as America's No. 1 beer, Anheuser-Busch released a statement telling its customers, "We hear you."

The brewer promised to redouble its efforts to stay focused on providing its customers with its chief product: beer, not culture war impositions.

Marcel Marcondes, global chief marketing officer at Anheuser-Busch, recently described the boycott against Bud Light as a "wake-up call" for the beer conglomerate.

"In times like this, when things get divisive and controversial so easily, I think it’s an important wake-up call to all of us marketers first of all to be very humble," Marcondes admitted at the Cannes Lions International Festival on Monday.

"That’s what we’re doing, being very humble, and really reminding ourselves of what we should do best every day, which is to really understand our consumers. Which is to really celebrate and appreciate every consumer that loves our brands — but in a way that can make them be together, not apart," he said.

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