A fire at a third-party data centre employed by Budweiser caused “severe” disruption to orders, leaving some wholesalers without stock.
One senior wholesale source told our sister website Better Retailing the incident meant the supplier had to cancel some orders into wholesale: “The fire happened two weeks ago and things are slowly coming back online. Orders had been written off for a week.”
A message from a wholesaler sent to retailers, seen by Better Retailing, said: “Following a fire last week, [Budweiser Brewing’s] ordering and supply management system was severely impacted.
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“Although they have now moved to a manual operation, two days’ worth of orders and deliveries were unfortunately lost, which has affected deliveries to our depots.
“As a result, we are currently out of stock on some lines, with Stella 10 Pack being the most significantly impacted. We are expecting further deliveries from Budweiser this week, which should restore full stock availability across all depots.”
Better Retailing understands the issues had also affected some promotional World Cup lines.
A Budweiser Brewing Group spokesperson confirmed the fire to Better Retailing, adding: “Due to a fire incident at a third-party data center on 7 May, we faced issues with some of our IT systems, impacting some scheduling and deliveries.
“The issue has been resolved as we worked through the order backlog. No customers have been significantly affected.”
