Most “buy backs” or anonymous drop-offs are related to a presumable scourge on the streets, where threats to civic welfare and matters of personal safety are at hand. Which is why you’ll often hear of communities hosting drop-offs of things like guns, knives, drug paraphernalia, and now, apparently, Budweiser.
This Saturday, May 21st, Buffalo’s Community Beer Works will be hosting an actual, honest-to-goodness Anheuser Busch Beer Buyback. From 12pm to 8pm, citizens of Buffalo can bring their unused Anheuser Busch products to 15 Lafayette Street, the site of the CBW brewery, no questions asked. In return for that unopened bottle of Bud Light or, god forbid, can of Bud Light Lime Raz-Ber-Rita, Buffalo citizens will receive $1 toward the price of a beer at Community Beer Works’ retail location.
Don’t expect to get rich, the cap is just $2 per person. But according to the CBW, Buffalo’s first nanobrewery, monetary gain isn’t really the spirit of the buyback. “We don’t care where the Anheuser Busch product came from or how you acquired it. You don’t even have to pretend someone left it in your fridge after a party,” CBW’s Chief Operating Officer Chris Smith says in the press release. “We just want it off our streets.”
When asked why Smith and the CBW are calling for such an urgent buyback of Budweiser, aka “America,” Smith insisted “it’s clear that Unintended Consumption of Anheuser Busch (UCAB) can have possible negative side effects. In our anecdotal experience, we’ve seen far too many friends suffer from loss of taste enjoyment and paroxysms of patriotism.” In fact, Smith is so concerned for his fellow Buffalonians (we know that’s probably wrong) he recommends they transport their Budweiser products in the trunk.
Considering the CBW’s opinions on the apparent and immediate danger of Budweiser products, the question remains: how to dispose of them? Should cans of “America” be given proper patriotic attention upon their destruction? “You know what’s American?,” says Smith. “Collecting all this beer and then blowing it up on the Fourth of July. While drinking good beer and making our streets beer safe for our kids.”
