{"id":4058,"date":"2011-12-12T13:00:53","date_gmt":"2011-12-12T19:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.guysdrinkingbeer.com\/?p=4058"},"modified":"2018-02-06T14:25:10","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T20:25:10","slug":"save-the-craft-a-b-wedco-illinois","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.guysdrinkingbeer.com\/save-the-craft-a-b-wedco-illinois\/","title":{"rendered":"A-B, WEDCO & Illinois"},"content":{"rendered":"
As beer-industry bombshells go, a pretty substantial one \u00a0was dropped during a hearing last Wednesday involving Anheuser-Busch, distributors in Illinois and the Illinois Liquor Control Commission.<\/p>\n
We told you<\/a> about the hearing last week, but to quickly recap, it was held to discuss A-B’s 30% stake in City Beverage, which is made up for four distributors (Chicago, Markham, Arlington Heights and Bloomington). At the heart of the debate was whether A-B can still have a hand in a distributor now that there is a new law on the books seemingly preventing a brewer from also owning a distribution outlet.<\/p>\n For the record, A-B doesn’t actually have the 30% stake in City Beverage. WEDCO, or Wholesaler Equity Deveopment Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of A-B is actually on record as having the 30% stake in City Beverage. But here’s the aforementioned bombshell, and the thing that reportedly raised some serious eyebrows at the ILCC hearing:<\/p>\n There is NO record of WEDCO being registered in Illinois.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n None. Zero. It is not a business licensed to do business in the Land of Lincoln.<\/p>\n To do our due diligence, we took the time to search four different terms in the “Corp\/LLC Certificate of Good Standing<\/a>” database provided online by the Secretary of State’s Office and found no evidence of WEDCO, Wholesaler Equity Development, Wholesaler Equity Development Corp or Wholesaler Equity Development Corporation. We provided screencaps of each search for you skeptics:<\/p>\n