As the Minnesota state government shutdown nears the two-week mark, residents may be facing another yet another inconvenience: no beer. MillerCoors is being force to pull its products from restaurants, bars, and stores across the state due to a brand licensing problem, according to the Associated Press.
Department of Public Safety spokesman Doug Neville said Wednesday that MillerCoors’ ”brand label registrations” with the state have expired. The employees who process renewals were laid off when state government shut down July 1 in a budget dispute.
Brewing giant MillerCoors told to pull products in Minnesota because of government shutdown
While other brands are unaffected, this is surely going to be costly for local businesses who can no longer sell MillerCoors beers.
Are the employees who enforce the licensing registrations laid off also?
This just might be the best title I’ve ever seen on GovLoop 🙂
Stay thirsty my friends! (said in the Dos Equis guy voice)
But other beers are available? Doesn’t sound like a problem to me 🙂
@Ed – Good point. If there is no body to enforce the rules, then I guess it doesn’t matter.
So much for beer being a durable stock. People drink in good economic times to celebrate, drink in bad economic times to drown their tears…but when the government shuts down…that whole theory just goes right out the window. Looking at stock for the joint-venture between Miller (SAB) and Coors (TAP), Coors is up about as much as Miller is down…so at this point, or shall I say pint, it appears to be a wash in the markets.
On the other hand, it looks like this gov shutdown is going to go beyond the beer market and into the liquor market as well. Check out this story on Bloomberg.