Founder of ‘Ultra Right’ Beer Wants to Use Brand to ‘Fight Back’ Against Woke Corporations

Founder of ‘Ultra Right’ Beer Wants to Use Brand to ‘Fight Back’ Against Woke Corporations
Seth Weathers at Big Kettle Brewing, brewer of Conservative Dad's Ultra Right beer, in Lawrenceville, Ga. (Conservative Dad's Ultra Right)
Ross Muscato
5/2/2023
Updated:
5/2/2023
0:00

Amid the backlash against Bud Light over its transgender marketing controversy, Seth Weathers saw an opportunity and went full out to capitalize on it.

He launched the brew “Conservative Dad’s Ultra Right”—which uses the tagline “100% Woke-Free American Beer.”

That was on April 12. About two weeks later, the company hit $1 million in sales.

“It’s been a wild ride, and I haven’t slept a whole lot—and that’s great,” said Weathers, a former Donald Trump campaign manager who goes by the name “Conservative Dad” on social media, in a conversation on April 27 with The Epoch Times.

The brew was created in response to Anheuser-Busch partnering with a transgender influencer to try to sell more of its product, Bud Light. Large numbers of conservative and traditional-minded people boycotted Bud Light, dramatically decreasing sales.

Conservative Dad's Ultra Right Beer. (Conservative Dad's Ultra Right)
Conservative Dad's Ultra Right Beer. (Conservative Dad's Ultra Right)

Now, people in droves are visiting the Conservative Dad’s Ultra Right website to order six packs of the golden lager and purchase Conservative Dad’s Ultra Right company gear.

Weathers, who lives in Georgia, has signed Big Kettle Brewing in Lawrenceville, Georgia, to make the beer.

He said he is finalizing dates, but he anticipates the beer will begin to ship “soon.”

The beer is a bit pricey, at $19.99 a six-pack, but Weathers said that the price will come down as Ultra Right establishes itself.

“We are aware of the price, but we will reduce the price soon,” said Weathers. “Part of the reason for what we are charging now is that we started with a small production run. But obviously, the more beer we sell, we will be able to lower the price. And by the time we get in stores—which should be in two to three months—we will be extremely competitive in price.”

Backlash Against Anheuser-Busch

With every purchase of an Ultra Right six-pack, or hat or shirt or glass emblazoned with the Ultra Right logo, people tell Anheuser-Busch what they think about the company trying to sell more suds by enlisting star transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a social media spot that was part of a Bud Light promotion tied to March Madness, a popular term for the NCAA basketball tournament.

The 48-second video, which Mulvaney posted on her social media network on April 1, shows Mulvaney opening a can of Bud Light, taking a sip, and saying, “This month, I celebrate my day 365 of womanhood, and Bud Light sent me possibly the best gift ever.” Then there is a shot of a can of Bud Light with an image of Mulvaney, as Mulvaney says, “A can with my face on it.” (Anheuser-Busch did not produce Bud Light cans decorated with the Mulaney logo for sale.)

Those who buy Conservative Dad’s products also express displeasure with comments made by Harvard-educated Alissa Heinerscheid, one of the Anheuser-Busch executives behind the Mulvaney Bud Light marketing piece. In a video before the fallout, Heinerscheid explained that Anheuser-Busch had tasked her to “evolve and elevate” the Bud Light brand and expand its appeal beyond “bratty, kind of out-of-touch humor.”

The Mulvaney-March Madness video proved to be a colossal misstep and a bad decision. Data from NielsenIQ and Bump Williams Consulting showed that for the week ending April 15, sales of Bud Light were down 17 percent from the same period in 2022.

Celebrities came down in support and opposition to the Mulvaney spot.

Conservative Dad's Ultra Right Sweatshirt. (Conservative Dad's Ultra Right)
Conservative Dad's Ultra Right Sweatshirt. (Conservative Dad's Ultra Right)

Perhaps the celebrity reaction that received the most attention and generated the most publicity was the video that musician Kid Rock posted of himself taking a rifle and shooting up what looks to be at least two or three cases of Bud Light sitting on a table.

As Bud Light sales numbers fell and negative reaction rose, Heinerscheid took a leave of absence, as did Daniel Blake, another Anheuser-Busch marketing executive.

Anheuser-Busch issued a statement from its CEO, Brendan Whitworth, a Harvard graduate (Harvard Business School) and a former U.S. Marine.
“We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people,” said Whitworth in the statement. “We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer.”

On a Mission

Weathers co-owns a marketing communications and political consulting business that services organizations with a conservative and a free-market bent and works to elect political candidates with the same philosophy and values. He was part of the Trump 2016 election team in Georgia.

While Weathers is all about producing quality beer, he also sees Ultra Right as a means to advance and support a higher calling and broader agenda.

“This is gonna sound corny, but I’m on a mission with this, and beer just happens to be the … what’s the word? … mechanism,” Weathers told The Epoch Times. “Beer happens to be the mechanism. Like this could have been apple juice, and I would be doing the same thing.”

Weathers has opinions about big companies—like Anheuser-Busch—pointing out their woke culture and neglect of conservatives.

“The point is you have these big corporations; they dump all over conservatives nonstop, and we never really fight back,” said Weathers. “Conservatives might skip a couple of football games. They might talk and appear on TV and say how awful these big corporations are, and how they are mistreating us and how they’re putting awful material in front of our children. But we never do anything about it.

“And so I’ve always said, we had to single out one company that did something that was bad enough, and we have to do incredible economic harm to one of these companies. Because as it stands now, conservatives have no economic power because, in the corporate world, we are viewed as a joke because we always come crawling back. We forget about our little boycott after two football games. We’re back in the stands.”

Weathers added: “So I’ve said this has to be the time. America can do without a crappy Bud Light. OK, we can go without. There’s plenty of other options out there. You don’t have to buy my beer. Just buy anything but an Anheuser-Busch product so we truly decimate the brand.”