Who owns O’DOUL’S BEER?

O’DOUL’S BEER is owned by

ANHEUSER-BUSCH INBEV

First Brewed

1990

Origin

United States

O’Doul’s is a non-alcoholic beer brand that was created in 1990. It was initially introduced by Anheuser-Busch, which in 2008 was purchased by InBev to become Anheuser-Busch InBev. The beer was released amongst an early wave of non-alcoholic products created by major breweries, along with Miller’s Sharp’s Beer released the year prior.

The launch was supported by an estimated $10 million to $12 million television ad campaign, which had the tagline, “O’Doul’s for Every O’Ccasion.” The campaign was met with criticism by anti-alcohol groups, which claimed that the ads violated alcohol advertising standards despite being for a non-alcoholic product.

For many years, O’Doul’s was the number one best selling beer in the United States. However, a new wave of craft beer entrants like Athletic Brewing, and zero-alcohol imports like Heineken’s 0.0 have now supplanted O’Doul’s. Both have benefited from technology advancements that have made non-alcoholic beer easier to make and simpler to remove the entirety of the alcohol from. O’Doul’s, in contrast, has a 0.4% ABV content, putting it just under the legal limit of 0.5% to be considered “non-alcoholic.”

Although the beer is legally non-alcoholic, there have been cases where drivers have been arrested for driving under the influence while seen by police officers with an open O’Doul’s bottle in their cars. In 2014, a 5th grade teacher in Linden, Michigan was reprimanded for allowing a student to bring bottle of O’Doul’s to class and sample them with the other students. The lesson was on colonial times, and the student brought the product to demonstrate how colonizers drank fermented drinks like beer instead of water for safety reasons.

Anheuser-Busch InBev also makes St Pauli Girl, another non-alcoholic beer targetting the import beer drinker.