The Schlitz Mistake: The Rise and Fall of Schlitz Brewing Co. (Featuring Primo)

Prior to the bad commercials Schlitz had great radio jingles. “When you’re out of Schlitz…you’re out of beer.” Simple, set to bouncy music.

A classic example of letting the bean counters destroy your quality product. Same thing happened to most of the US automobile industry, especially GM.

The resurrected Schiltz is actually a very good quality American style lager. The brew master in charge worked with former Schlitz brewhouse workers to reverse engineer the original formula. I've had the beer several times over the years. I recommend trying the beer if you can find it.

Never change the recipe...If it ain't broke, don't fix it...I loved Schlitz in the day...but beer drinkers will ALWAYS know the difference in flavor...ALWAYS...

This should be a case study taught in every business school to impress upon students the fundamental importance of customer satisfaction and the disastrous consequences of the cost-cutting mantra [Boeing?].

In the 1950's, my dad worked at Schlitz each summer -- as a "taster", he said. He brought me to work one time (I was about 5 or 6) and introduced me to his colleagues, all men wearing white lab coats. One taught me new expressions like "See ya later, alligator. After a while, crocodile. Toodloo kangaru." Another filled up a sink with water and gave me a plastic boat to play with. I had tours, and fun all morning.  Side note: when the machinery was off calibration, cans would be "short-filled" and couldn't be sold. They were given away to my dad and the guys in white coats. My dad took his cases to my grandpa, who distributed them around the large extended family. Lot's of Schlitz cans are in those family reunion pictures. Great memories, and thanks for the whole history of the company.

Im 71 now but when i was just coming of age Schlitz was my first beer.

Schlitz? Man! I aint had a Schlitz since I was in grade school. !

Moral of the story is consumers are smarter than the executives give them credit for. Thank you for providing the references at the end. That’s always a mark of quality.

Accountants, chasing larger profits, have a demonstrated history of brand failure.

My grandmother's brother was the head brew meister at Schlitz. The recipe was in his head. They tried the whole new Coke thing and told him they didn't need him anymore. When they realized their mistake, he wouldn't come back, and the original Schlitz malt liquor recipe died with him.

Schlitz was enormous in Chicago. All around the city are taverns that featured the Schlitz globe as an architectural detail, rather than simply signage. My family had a strong Schlitz connection. I had two uncles that worked for them, one as a driver, the other as a bookkeeper. I still have a photo of me as an infant of myself in a local park, with my father and other men, with a bottle of Schlitz firmly in hand. Sad fate.

My father was a Creative Director for Leo Burnett in Chicago back in the sixties until he died in 1974. One of the campaigns he worked on was Stroh's Beer and he did great on it. During his spin-up research he met someone who told him the very true story of the corporate line "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer." Turns out it was a fluke of circumstance, Let me explain... After work one night a guy working on the Schlitz campaign for whomever was handling their advertising stopped by a bar for a well-deserved drink. Eventually some other guy of no importance comes into the bar and asks for a Budweiser. The bartender tells him they're out of Bud. So the guy says, "When you're out of Bud, you're out of beer." The guy working on the campaign ran back to work and wrote it down so he could see it and spoke it over and over in different ways. The next morning he gave his pitch for "When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer." It stuck. Ironically, a few years after my father died, Stroh's bought Schlitz.

Thanks for the video. My parents used to drink a regional beer here in Philadelphia called Ballantine Beer. They must have done something similar to Schlitz. One day my dad said the beer tasted different and not in a good way. Needless to say my dad changed beer brands. Ballantine also eventually also closed their brewery in Newark, NJ. The brand was bought by some other brewery but never was able to recover and I never see it anymore.

"When you're out of Schlitz, you're out of beer!" Stroh's rhymes with nose. Great video on American beer!

"What made Milwaukee Famous, has made a big fool out of me" There's a County music line for every situation.

This was a needless disaster, all done in-house and Coca-Cola should have learned from this but didn't. 40 years later the "new Schlitz" concern painstakingly recreated as close as possible to brew a beer made with the 1960 formula; even combing surviving paperwork and surviving brewmasters to make the beer that's available today. I like it and they worked hard to get it right. Damn shame it had to come to that.

First, Schlitz was so big in the '70s that they were the corporate sponsors of a tour by The Who. Next, what the heck happened to Strohs?

As someone who lives right near Milwaukee, Schlitz still exists and I can get it on tap at multiple bars in my town

I can speak from experience on this. Back in the late 70's a neighbor was rebuilding an engine for a 70 Olds Cutlass and offered us a beer. I don't know too many 15 year old farm kids that would turn that down so I took 1. It was a Schlitz and it was the worst can of, I guess you could call it beer, I've ever had in my life. This was about 40 miles north of Milwaukee and I did actually know what american Lager is supposed to taste like. About the only thing that I could compare it to was Rhinelander, and that crap was awful. Fun fact, at that time Kingsbury, which was actually a decent cheap Lager was about $4 for a case of returnables. It was far and away more drinkable than Schlitz and Rhinelander. Here is another little tidbit from my youth. As a farm kid I could buy beer by the keg when I was 16, no questions asked. I worked fields 5 or 10 miles away from home and since it would take 30 minutes to drive a tractor that far I would just go to the local taverns and eat lunch there. So after a few years of that they must've just felt I was old enough and served me without thinking about it. At football practice, I was a sophomore at the time, the seniors were talking about having a party but none of them could buy beer. I told them I could get them beer, no problem. They didn't believe me, obviously, but I did talk one of them into picking me up after milking cows, about 7pm and I'd get the beer and he could make the couple calls he needed to make to let everyone know the party was on. I was invited to all the parties after that, and only needed to be the guy that got the beer about 6 more times. Yup, I was cool with all of them after that. At that time, Miller was the popular beer with the teen crowd and that's what we bought until I was a senior in High School. At that point I noticed the quality was going down so at a smaller party I picked up Pabst and mentioned it only to the guy that was throwing the party. He asked because the tapper was different. He was cool with it as a 1/2 barrel of Pabst was $24 and Miller was $28. (something like that price wise) The only give away was the tapper was different, but nobody paid attention to that as the barrel was in a tub of ice with a blanket over the top to keep it cold. About 1/2 way thru the party my buddy mentioned to me that everyone was asking him "is this Miller, it's great". He just told them yes and we were laughing about it. My theory is Miller was just too popular and quality control went down or wasn't aged enough, either way Pabst was better at the time. We told our closer friends about it and the cat slowly left the bag. It took about 2 months before most people figured out Pabst was the way to go back then and that was all we bought.