With Heineken’s U.S. Business Reeling, the Dutch Macrobrewer Announces Global Layoffs
It can feel at times like we’re living through the Twilight of the Macrobrewing Gods. Anheuser-Busch InBev is selling off Gussie and The Third’s hard-won national brewing empire. Molson Coors is slashing jobs, closing legacy plants, and nursing a hangover from the here-and-gone gains of the Bud Light fiasco. Constellation Brands is reeling from the Trump regime’s full-on assault of Modelo’s core customer base. Pabst Brewing Co. is limping away from its bungled Pabst Light launch, shedding key executives, and trying to sublet its corporate headquarters.
Not to be outdone among the United States’ ailing lager leviathans, Heineken has spent the past few years touting small-base growth of 0.0 while trying to figure out what to do with its billion-dollar craft brewing albatross in Lagunitas, breathe fresh life into Dos Equis with a return to the very stale “Most Interesting Man in The World” character, and figure out how Pacifico ate Tecate’s lunch. Not to mention find a dignified next act for its decidedly off-trend flagship. The dashboard is flashing red for Big Green, especially with regard to its stateside business.
On Wednesday, Heineken — the world’s second-largest brewer by volume, and America’s fourth-largest, by beer sold here — reported its full-year earnings for 2025. Overall, the firm eked out something of a qualified victory iN tHiS (global) eCoNoMy, posting -1.2 percent volume, +1.6 percent net revenue, and +3.8 percent net revenue per hectoliter. Its performance in the U.S., though, was considerably worse: a “high single-digit” decline in net revenue, and volume decline in “in the low teens.” Multi-outlet grocery, mass retail, and convenience store scan data through Dec. 28, 2025 tracked by market research firm Circana had the firm’s off-premise sales alone down 8.7 percent in dollars and 8.4 percent in volume year-over-year. Its once-influential flagship, Heineken lager, was down more.
Bad, but could be worse. Considering how tough 2025 was for the U.S. beer industry in general and major importers in particular, you could imagine Heineken taking a beat before making any drastic changes to its business. According to outgoing chief executive Dolf van den Brink, though, the plan is, ah, not that. “Productivity has been a top priority in our EverGreen strategy,” Heinie’s head honcho told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Wednesday, referring to the company’s internal name for its just-completed five-year plan. (Up next: EverGreen 2030!) As part of the “operationalization” of its ~$500 million-a-year corporate savings strategy, Heineken will shed 7 percent of its global workforce over the next two years. In plain English, it’s a layoff — and a big one.
“Across these initiatives, we expect a net reduction of between 5,000 and 6,000 roles over the next two years,” the firm’s chief financial officer, Harold van den Broek, told analysts on Wednesday’s earnings call. He added that “timelines will vary by market.”
It’s not clear how many of those jobs will come from this market. The breakout was not mentioned on the earnings call, and a Heineken spokesperson referred Hop Take to the firm’s official press release, which does not contain that information. (If you work at Heineken, submit tips about this situation by emailing dave@dinfontay.com or texting dinfontay.11 on Signal. Anonymity available.)
In the absence of official word, though, there’s still plenty of context to help clarify Heineken’s intentions here in the United States. The Dutch brewing giant has always had an unusual relationship with this market, being the only European heavyweight in the top five and trafficking heavily in transatlantic imports. For decades, Heineken didn’t even really have a corporate presence on these shores; it left much of that brand-building work to Van Munching & Company, its longtime New York City-based importer, only taking its American fate into its own hands with the formation of Heineken USA (HUSA) in the ’90s. In the telling of scion Philip Van Munching, the transition from one to the other was anything but smooth, riddled with cross-ocean cultural clashes, influxes of MBAs from beyond the trade, and ill-conceived product launches like Tarwebok, non-light Amstel, and Heineken in 7-ounce bottles.
“For sixty years, Heineken had done quite well in the U.S. with one basic image and one straightforward message: quality and quality,” he wrote in his dishy 1997 memoir, “Beer Blast.” Of the Dutch executives who had taken over from his family’s business and immediately begun tinkering with success, he added: “At some point they may wake up to the fact that change for the sake of change doesn’t tend to work.”
Eventually, of course, Heineken got the hang of things here, making additive changes to its U.S. business rather than performative ones. Key among those: In 2010, the macrobrewer beat out SABMiller to buy Mexico’s FEMSA for $7.6 billion, snagging both an operational beachhead in the Americas and a trio of Mexican lager brands with intra-continental appeal. “The acquisition strengthens considerably our position within the global beer market, expands our portfolio of leading international brands and enhances our leading position in the US import market,” said Jean-François van Boxmeer, at the time the company’s chairman and chief executive. (SABMiller would be acquired by ABI in 2016; van Boxmeer would hand Heineken’s reins over to van den Brink in 2020.)
Of the acquired brands Sol, Tecate, and Dos Equis, the last would prove to be the biggest bonanza, thanks in no small part to the already-in-flight “Most Interesting Man in The World” campaign. Launched in 2006, HUSA wisely let it ride, and it quickly began delivering gobsmacking growth to the firm’s top line. According to Nielsen off-premise scan data touted by Euro RSCG, the since-rebranded ad agency that created the concept, the brand’s sales were up 20 percent in volume and 33.7 percent in dollars for 2011, with sales in markets where Heineken was running the ads outpacing those where it wasn’t (21.1 percent and 15.7 percent, respectively). “Velocity gains for the Dos Equis franchise are 45% and an incredible 85% for lager, which is featured in the campaign,” the agency’s report crowed.
Alas, in hindsight, HUSA made the opposite mistake with “The Most Interesting Man in the World” than when taking over from the Van Munchings: It waited too long to change. Dos Equis only finally retired the campaign in early 2019, and even with a dozen years of runway to find a worthy follow-up, the brand’s once-prominent position in the American zeitgeist has languished ever since. (Hence, the recently announced resurrection.) The rest of the firm’s Mexican portfolio has yielded mixed performance. In 2017, Heineken inked a 10-year licensing deal with Molson Coors to handle the marketing and sales of Sol, which has gone fine-ish. Tecate went from post-Pabst Blue Ribbon hipster darling (remember Dirty Ashtrays?) and early chelada frontrunner to a backbencher as the Mexican lager segment hit warp speed, its packaging and positioning out of step with the visions of south-of-the-border paradise that have helped halo Corona and Modelo. Again, the recent tape tells a tough tale: Tecate’s off-premise sales were down 11.2 percent in dollars and 10.9 percent in volume for 2025, per Circana. Dos Equis itself was down 7 percent dollars and 6.5 percent volume in the same frame.
(Apologies to the “apolitical” readers, but the American political landscape must be noted here. Like Constellation, Heineken has exposure to the Trump administration’s deadly terror campaign on immigrant communities, many of which overindex on its flagship brand and Mexican trio. Also like Constellation, Heineken is trying to walk a very fine line of blaming the predictable outcome of the president’s regime of violence for lost sales, without blaming the president himself. “HEINEKEN USA was disproportionately impacted by the consumption decline of the Hispanic population,” reads the company’s FY2025 statement on the matter. Its spokesperson did not address a request to clarify this claim.)
What else? Lagunitas seems stuck in a perpetual cycle of rebrands and leadership shuffles that are compounding the malaise first-generation craft breweries are fighting through. Red Stripe (in which Heineken took a controlling interest in 2015) might have caught the same vacation-themed wave that Kona Big Wave and Maui Brewing Co. are currently surfing, but that just hasn’t panned out. Still, those are small potatoes. Turn your attention back to the flagship.
A core challenge for Heineken (the company) is keeping enough drinkers in Heineken (the beer) while backfilling losses with Heineken (the brand family.) After ceding the crown of America’s top import to Corona in the late ’90s, the flagship has struggled to retain relevance with the American drinking public, and its sales have suffered apace. It was -10.1 percent dollars and -10.4 percent volume in Circana-tracked stores last year. Given the sheer size of the top-10 brand, that’s a big hole for line extensions to fill. Heineken has had some success in that regard, but not enough. Its 0.0 product has been a solid addition to the lineup since its launch in 2019. Company brass likes to call it the world’s best-selling NA beer, and it holds a strong No. 1 share lead in this country as well. That segment is vanishingly small compared to traditional beer, but as we’ve discussed before, there are strategic benefits for firms like Heineken to participate in it. The 0.0 line will introduce its first flavored extensions next month.
On the other hand, Heineken Silver, the company’s proposed answer to Michelob Ultra, is still raising questions. After a lackluster stateside rollout in 2023, the company threw another $100 million at it for 2024. It’s selling well globally, representing some 15 percent of the company’s overall volume last year, but it has yet to make a meaningful dent in the U.S. market. When is the last time you saw a slim can of the stuff in the wild? I still never have.
While Heineken Wednesday signaled that it would pull out of some global markets as part of its impending layoffs, it beggars belief to imagine it would abandon the U.S., which remains culturally and strategically important even as its thirst for beer wanes. But with a narrow portfolio pressured by the Trump regime’s trade war and domestic terror campaign, its short-term outlook in this country isn’t especially bright.
🤯 Hop-ocalypse Now
The various beverage-alcohol trade groups that peddle influence in Washington, D.C., came together to prevent any more stringent anti-alcohol language in the long-awaited revision of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, but with that mission accomplished, they’re back to their default mode of being professional frenemies. And as the market gets tighter — particularly for craft brewers — you can expect to see little slivers of daylight start to shine through between previously lockstepped lobbying shops. Last week, the Brewers Association’s staff economist Matt Gacioch published a piqued blog post responding to a statement in January from National Beer Wholesalers Association’s chief economist Lester Jones. The latter number-cruncher had argued that the bev-alc market’s current biggest problem is oversupply, a point of increasing sensitivity for the SKU-heavy, capacity-glutted craft brewing industry. The former countered that such a framing served to “push focus away from wholesalers” and “pass the buck.” The girls are fightinggggg!
📈 Ups…
In a night of generally dismal Super Bowl ads, Budweiser’s boring Americana pastiche took top marks from USA Today’s Ad Meter… Sure, the beer category was down for 2025, but guess what? Spirits was too!… Allagash Brewing Co. blasted past its 2025 target for in-state grain utilization, ultimately brewing with 2 million pounds of the stuff last year… Congrats to the 88 percent of Americans who stuck with their Dry January pledges last month (or at least told NIQ they did)…
📉 …and downs
The cider category eked out actual growth last year, but its annual conference in Rhode Island last week was clouded by intra-industry agita… Panel data from NIQ indicates that of the major non-alcoholic beer brands, only Athletic Brewing Co. boasts a positive conversion rate (and even then, just 53 percent)… The new Voodoo Ranger line extension, G-Force, is a “supercharged” 11 percent ABV, yeesh… Angel City Brewery, the Los Angeles subsidiary of Boston Beer Co. that Jim Koch marked for death upon his return as CEO last year, will finally close at the end of April…
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