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🍺 BEER
Everybody wants to sell Tilray Brands a brewery. The cannabis giant’s beer division president told the crowd at Brewbound Live earlier this month that his team is fielding fielding 2–3 calls a day from owners looking to hock their breweries. OK, yes, technically, that’s not “everybody,” given there are like 10,000 breweries nationally and Tilray’s big buying spree only kicked off in earnest this past summer. But still.
The Teamsters are ready to strike Anheuser-Busch InBev. Nearly all—99%!—of the company’s 5,000 Teamster workers in the US have voted to strike in the event their contract expires at the end of February 2024 without another in place. The union said Saturday in a statement that there are no bargaining sessions currently scheduled; we’ll see whether talks resume once ABI sees this lockstep show of rank-and-file support for the Teamsters’ bargaining team. Stay tuned.
Armed Forces Brewing Co. secured its permits. Republican presidential nopeful Glenn Youngkin’s favorite polarizing military-themed brewery won approval to operate at a heated Norfolk City Council meeting this past Tuesday, with just one council member voting against its conditional-use permit despite objections from from LGBTQ+ activists, community organizers, two civic leagues, and the city’s own planning commission over its culture-war schtick, dog-whistling brand ambassador, site-inappropriate expansion plans, unauthorized construction work, and apparent disregard for municipal process and general neighborliness. As the Virginia Mercury reported Wednesday, it also turns out that AFBC’s chief executive (the guy who called local critics “truly evil” “extremists” in “classified” vlogs to investors) was stopped in Maryland for driving while intoxicated in 2013, no-showed at court, and avoided a bench warrant for his arrest for the following nine years, pleading guilty only in July 2022. It’s not clear what effect, if any, that could/would have on the company’s permit with the state to brew.
[Clarification 12/17/23 12:37pm EST: A previous version of this piece said Beal was “arrested” for driving while intoxicated. He was stopped for and charged with DWI in 2013, but court records are not clear as to whether he was actually arrested at the time of the incident. Fingers regrets any confusion.]