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A company forever linked to Milwaukee – Pabst Brewing Company – plans to move its headquarters to Los Angeles sometime this summer. The company has endured a turbulent and occasionally sordid history since leaving this city, but the resurgent popularity of its Pabst Blue Ribbon brand led to its purchase by food brand magnate C. Dean Metropoulos last year. Now, speculation is rife that his celebrity-hungry, California-based sons could turn off PBR’s hip customer base.

(illustration by adrian palomo)

PBR’s vintage label, down-to-earth blue collar vibe, cheap price and passable taste have made it a favorite of young drinkers, particularly those wanting drink large volumes of affordable, mass-produced brew without tainting their counter-culture credibility. Metropoulos, the brand wizard behind Chef Boyardee, Hungry Man dinners and Bumble Bee Tuna, snatched up Pabst for a cool $250 million last year hoping to capitalize on this eager, young customer base.

Metropoulos, who lives in Connecticut, handed off management of Pabst to his twentysomething sons, Daren and Evan, who live in Los Angeles. Changes followed: CEO Kevin Kotecki resigned in November and was replaced by John Cochran, who announced in a May 11 email to employees the company was moving its suburban Chicago headquarters to Los Angeles, where “the opportunities to grow Pabst are completely energizing for me and hopefully you.”

In April, the Metropoulos brothers unveiled a new brand, an extra-large fruit-flavored malt beverage, Blast by Colt 45, containing an extra jolt of alcohol. Attorneys general in Connecticut, Massachusetts, California and other states (but not Wisconsin, yet) say the drink should be banned. They also say the ad campaigns, featuring rapper Snoop Dogg, appeal to underage drinkers.

In an April interview with the Bloomberg news service, the brothers said they were in talks with Will Ferrell, allegedly an Old Milwaukee fan, Mark Wahlberg, purported to favor Schlitz, and even retired defensive lineman Warren Sapp, who they said might endorse Colt 45.

In an earlier interview with web-based Bloomberg TV, the elder Metropoulos said of PBR’s popularity, “The important thing is to nurture that trend and not alienate that wonderful, loyal consumer.” But even he was name-dropping, mentioning that “folks like Jamie Foxx have indicated a desire to be helpful.”

Evan and Daren Metropoulos

Metropoulos spoke highly of Pabst’s other brands and their growth potential. It owns many regional ones, such as Texas’ Lone Star and Detroit’s Stroh’s. But the interviewer was skeptical. “How do you sell more Schlitz?” he asked.

The company’s future may hinge on PBR. A story in The Chicago Tribune suggested a Los Angeles move could alienate the beer’s trendy adherents. One expert, Kelly O’Keefe, a professor of brand strategy at Virginia Commonwealth University, told the newspaper she wanted to “grab these guys by the ears … This is a Midwest portfolio of beers, and it makes no sense to plop them in, of all places, L.A.”

In leaving Illinois, the newspaper added, it was jilting the state, which had enticed it to move to the Chicago area from San Antonio, Texas, in 2006 with $1 million in tax incentives. The state could go after Pabst for some of that money.

The move came as a surprise to Illinois officials. “It is unfortunate that Pabst chose to make this decision without consulting with the state,” a representative from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity told the Tribune.

Adweek said the Metropoulos family was relocating Pabst to a “glitzier zip code” in an attempt to “revamp a faltering label.” It added that the company should fear competition from the rising craft beer industry: “The same ironic T-shirt wearing imbibers reaching for a cold tall boy of PBR might start to think twice if there is a quirky-named alternative in the same price range.”

The Los Angeles Times played down the glamour angle, reporting that Pabst was moving into “a bruised California that has seen quite a few corporate head offices flee the state.”

Pabst’s Milwaukee connection, although indelible, is growing ever-more-tenuous. The company shut down its last Milwaukee brewery in 1996, was bought by California beer tycoon Paul Kalmanovitz in 1985 and housed under the Kalmanovitz Charitable Foundation established following his death in 1987. It was IRS regulations that finally prodded the non-profit foundation into selling the company last year to Metropoulos. (The feds limit how long a non-profit organization can own a for-profit company.)

As part of the non-profit, Pabst was part of a long-running legal battle over the Kalmanovitz estate. Relatives and former employees accused a group of his closest associates of drugging and even murdering the tycoon, who was known to his friends as “Mr. Paul.”

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