Bonus: Beer is Flowing Again

include Budweiser, Corona and Stella Artois. A Bienbev operates a brewery in Wuhan, China, where the pandemic began and which was the world's first city to go into lockdown. But as life returns to normal in Wuhan and cities all over the world, beer is flowing again in record quantities. For a b InBev CEO Carlos Brito, this and around in Fortunes tells an optimistic story about mankind's ability to rebound from this catastrophe. Ultimately, he says, humans are social creatures.

COVID nineteen may have pushed us temporarily into isolation, but it hasn't killed our urge to gather, to cultivate friendships, to celebrate. Cheers to that. I hope you enjoy this and other interviews on how the coronavirus is transforming the business world. And thanks to Stephanie Flanders for letting me hijack her feed. Carlos Brito, Welcome to the program. Thank you glad to be here. Andrew, So, you were one of the very first global consumer companies to feel the

impact of COVID nineteen. That's because you operate a brewery in Wuhan, China, which of course is where the outbreak. And tell us a little bit about what happened in Wuhan and how's the situation there today. It's interesting you asked this, Andrew, because in January and the first week of January, first ten days, I was in China and I traveled, you know, throughout five different cities. We had wholesale of conventions, we had people from all over China.

Ain't directed with everybody. Everything was normal. Then it came back ten days later the whole thing in China started with the lockdowns and the travel restrictions. During the first day of Chinese New Year. In Uhan, we have one of our close to forty breweries. We had a big operation in China. It's one of our top five countries. We have thirty thou colleagues there and Whan. Yes it's

a big brewery, but it's one of many. And UH everything in the country went through through a lockdown and shut down consumers, businesses, everything for a month and a half and then we started reopening and Johan when was was one of the last brewers to reopen. But now for the past two months, everything is back to normal and China as much as it can be. When you look at retailers, bars, restaurants, everything, they're pretty much all open. Our officers back to normal since two months. So China's

way ahead of the curve. And the same with Korea. South Korea we have also big business there and they also experienced the COVID as China did in the end of January, and they're all back to the new normal. So is Wuhan a bell weather for global consumption trends city. I think we learned a lot in China. I think one of the big advantage of being a global company and we operate in all continents UH and have big

you know, business around all the major countries. The big advantage, as you said at the beginning, was that we learned from China early on how to be able to operate guaranteeing the safety of our people, how to observe and to understand where consumers are going in terms of their consumption, how to adapt our supply chain to the new reality. And when the pandemics started becoming, you know, going to Europe, Africa, the America's, we had the protocols that were developing China,

South Korea, bar our colleagues on how to operate. So all I had to do is pretty much translate everything and uh because you had to observe social distancing, for example within the Brewers, so you had to operate with fewer people, you had to work from home. You had consumers now not being able to go to bars, restaurants, hotels or travel, and a lot of occasions migrate into

the in home occasion. And with that consumers buying more in supermarkets, grocery stores, and that had to being impact on the supply chain in terms of package mix, brand mix,

you know, in terms of delivery distribution. So agility was something that we learned from China that was very key to navigate given the fluidity of the situation and uncertainly because every country was a bit different in how a pandemic developed, in what measures governments took in different countries in terms of lockdowns, stay home type mandates, and our consumers also reacted. But the learning in China was key for us to navigate in Europe, Africa, the America's you've

just announced record be a sales. It seems as though people count wait to start drinking it. And what's driving this and is it sustainable. It's interesting you asked that because in China, because it was the first country, the big country of ours that was affected, we did a lot of consumer research during the pandemic, and what we saw is that the question was what would you like

to do once the pandemic is over? And what they told us is that they would I would love to go back to their normal left So they'll love to go to restaurants, to travel, to meet their friends physically, to go with its relatives, family members, and uh and do all these sorts of things, go to ball games, go to music festivals. So that gave us a little bit of an insight that yes, they will be a

new normal. But the fundamental things that consumers are trying to do when they have free time and in trying to keep a close relationship with family and friends are still very much deep inside of them, and we don't think those things will change. There is obviously a colossal global industry, but it's also very local. You're literally everywhere. Take us around the world. Where are you seeing positive

consumption trends? Where are the problems? Well, if you look at our you're very right, and our business is global, they're very local. At the same time, if you look at everything we sell, what of all we sell the supply chain of that local. We buy raw materials from farmers that are local. We use water local, We hire our colleagues locally, we brew locally, We sell back to consumers locally. So we are very connected to our communities

and that's right. During COVID, once again we tried to be in a big way part of the solution and we provided in many countries hospitals. We used our trucks that were idle to help governments distribute food. We we get we we we We started producing face masks, face shields, alcohol sanitizer, hand sanitizers because we deal with with non all call beers. So the alcohol extracted from the non

all call beer we repurpose to hand sanitizers. So we did all these things because again we're part of the community. Our colleagues and our consumers live in the community, so that was something that was key for us. It was key for us also we learned learning from China to establish those priorities very clear day one. First priorities safety

of our colleague. Second, our communities. Third our consumers. All to support them at home with the entertainment, with streaming, with delivery services, so they because they had to be at home. How to support the supply chain be upstream. Our suppliers are downstream, our bars, restaurants, pubs, our retailers.

We did lots of things to support them to bridge this lockdown, and at the end, how to support again, how to be prepared for the recovery because we knew the recovery would come, and how to understand the new normal and our consumers will Talking about the recovery of the new normal, there's a lot of concerns that many bars and restaurants in cities will never reopen. What are you seeing and then what generally how seriously do you take this idea that COVID nineteen contribute this sort of

stampede out of cities. Well, in terms of bars and restaurants, are very committed to their recovery in many countries, are getting together with other CpG companies like in Brazil for example, and we are there to finance they are coming back to business, to finance that first purchase when they reopen, to provide them with a reopening kit in sanitizers, gowns, gloves, everything, and to also give a discount on some key s kus key products so they can get back to business.

When you look at our supply chain, most of our farmers that we buy from our small farmers fifteen thou of them. And of the six million retailers that we service on a weekly basis throughout the world, most of them are small and medium businesses. So our successes very connected to their success and that's why we're so connected to having them recovering from this whole pandemic that affected

them a big way. So, for example, one of the things we did during the pandemic was too fold first to launch it in many countries, in more than twenty countries, vouchers, so consumers could buy vouchers to help the retailers while they were closed their favorite pubs, and then redeemed that when the pub would reopen. And the second thing is that we put very quickly, because we have a very

very big tech team inside our company. We put in place um apps that would connect consumers that were in stay home type mandates in orders with our retailers that were in shutdown. But they need each other, so we put that app to connect them. And in the Americans today, this app is already a big deal. We have hundreds of thousands of retailers that are connected in hundreds of thousands of consumers that are using it. So we did everything we could during and now after the pandemic to

make sure this uh pub's restaurants will come back. So it seems pretty likely that more and more people will work from home permanently after this, even after the pandemic has has gone away. Does that concern you? Does it affect you in any way? A few after work drinkers. Well, our our offices, for example, if you take us as an example, we've always worked in open, open plan offices, you know, so nobody has an office I'll work in a big table with my direct reports around me. Everybody

can see me, everybody can come talk to me. There's no doors, no assistance, blocking anything. So we we've always done that for now thirty years because we believe that people have in contact with each other is very important. So for example, I think zoom and this kind of technology can bridge you know, during the pandemic, you know much better than I thought, and I think most people thought.

So it's very efficient. But it does not replace the experience of people bumping to each other, having a coffee at a break, having a beer at the end of the day. We have bars in our offices, so at the end of the day they can have a beer, talk about business, talk about life. It doesn't replace the traveling a lot of my routine, for examples, traveling to all these countries around the world, and when you travel unique host other you need clients, You see consumers while

they're shopping, You ask consumers questions. So all those things are not programmed interactions that cannot be replaced easy by zoom. Zoom can replace what's programmed. So meetings that are you know, in your calendar, but these things that happen as you go through markets and you see people buying, and you see your people in action and interact with the customer, and you visit the whole salter, this thing's technology can replaced. So I think, yes, there will be some flexibilization after

work environment. But I think people find that after a couple of months. You know, for example, suppose you have somebody new join your company. How can this person it's not fair with them that we continue the whole life like this, because they will now be able to understand how the company works, how the culture is all about, because they won't be able to interact with people. So I think what's happening now is that we're using a lot of the social capital that we've been accumulating. But

there's a limit. At some point you have to accumulate more captor in the bank in terms of your colleagues and how well you know them. The last question, your entire business model depends on bringing people together. Does that change in any way as a result of COVID nineteen. Do we become less social or the opposite? No? No, I think what changes is that, for example, starts from

the culture of our company. Our culture is a culture of ownership in in that we treat the companies hours a culture of talented people, big dreams, and more importantly, a culture that we go where consumers go because that's where growth is. So what we've been observing during this pandemic is that consumers have the same needs of getting together. It's yet that just that because of all the restrictions,

they had to use technology to do so. But what you also observe is that as as as soon as these restrictions are easy, consumers go back and try to regain the ground they lost in terms of physical interactions. Of course, sure, of course consumers are more cautious, they are more you know, they're looking more at social distancing, wearing mass and all that. But at the end of physical contact, we believe the new normal will have it's yet to be defined, but consumers will go to some

old habits because those are have been ingrained forever. I mean, human being is a social animal. We like to be together with people and the yes, technology can bridge lots of things, but at the end of the day, the human beings the human being, and I think the new normal will entail lots of things that used to be the old normal. For sure, Carlos Pretta, it's great to have you on the program. Thanks for your insights, thanks for your time. Thank you very much. I have a

great day. Thanks for listening. I hope you'll tune in later this year for a digital edition of the annual Bloomberg New Economy Forum, where business and government leaders from around the world will talk about the challenge of bill building a more sustainable and equitable post COVID economy.