Heineken USA is going to slash 15 percent of its overall workforce in the United States according to its Director of Corporate Communications & Brand Public Relations Bjorn Trowery. The U.S. operating company of the Dutch brewing company Heineken that imports, markets and sells the global brewer’s namesake brands, as well as other brands like Dos Equis and Tecate, experienced “high-single digit” volume declines.
This news contrasts reports from last month when Heineken reported for its Heineken brand in 2018 the “best performance in over a decade” and “another year of superior top-line growth” for the company (inside.beer, 13.2.2019).
“Today, we announced that we are modifying our sales team structure to align with our strategy and to enable more efficient ways of working. This will help Heineken USA be more cost effective, and allow us to reinvest behind our brands and business in the U.S. While change that impacts our people is always difficult, we believe these changes will better position Heineken USA for the future,” Trowery said.
Five month ago, Lagunitas Brewing Company, since May 2017 fully owned subsidiary of Heineken in the United States already announced to reduce its staff by 12 percent of its 900 employees. The company said at that time that the reduction would affect all departments and all locations, but the majority of 100 job cuts would take place at it’s headquarter in Petaluma, California (inside.beer, 3.10.2018).
Other U.S. brewers that laid-off people in the last years due to a proliferation in the number of breweries in conjunction with a growth slowdown in the craft beer market included Anheuser-Busch (inside.beer, 10.12.2018), MillerCoors (inside.beer, 5.9.2018), Constellation Brands (inside.beer, 16.8.2018), Pabst Brewing, Redhook Ale Brewery (inside.beer, 19.10.2016), Stone Brewing Co (inside.beer, 14.10.2016), Summit Brewing Company (inside.beer, 2.1.2018), New Belgium Brewing (inside.beer, 28.2.2018), Deschutes Brewery (inside.beer, 13.12.2018) and Green Flash Brewing (inside.beer, 20.6.2018).
