While this won’t impact the day-to-day for anyone using on the site, I wanted to let you all know that ZX Ventures, a division of AB InBev, has fully acquired RateBeer.
After ZX Ventures took a minority investment in RateBeer, we were able to make improvements to infrastructure, put out an in-house mobile app, and modernize key pages that as the only full-time employee with help from some amazing admins and volunteer coders, I was never able to tackle.
Now, with access to greater resources, we’ll be able to continue modernizing the site, and expand into new areas, like an affiliate marketplace in Australia.
RateBeer is a quality-focused organization, and our value to the community has always depended on our integrity, and willingness to put in greater effort to produce more meaningful scores and information. I’m very grateful for having the opportunity to serve you all. It’s been a great pleasure meeting so many of you in person, and through this more fully understanding our important role in industry, and the joy, pride and responsibility felt by so many out there in RateBeeria.
It’s with this in mind – my great respect for what we’ve built – that I’ll remain working on the project in the same role, as global community manager, helping guide the site into even better future days.
I look forward to seeing where the future takes us - thanks for helping shape this journey with me!
this is like an episode of Bar Rescue where Joe has to kick out all his friends because they were bringing the place down and scaring off all the girls
i wouldnt be overly bothered if rate beer had improved since the intial investment.
But im stiull waiting for an app that comes close to Erics, and Still loath the unpredicable search
I’m an IT guy and, some time ago, I’ve written a code to migrate my beer reviews from BeerAdvocate to Ratebeer. I guess that, with a small investment, I can create something that does the opposite
Inevitable. Even with the initial investment, there was never a fully formed plan to turn the place around. Just a new coat of paint, empty promises, and a laughable idea that things were getting better
It would be horrible to see RB shut down!!! But on one side, I would probably cut way back on drinking and giving a shit about beer. I would hope Joe was smart enough to add some sort of deal that would not happen??
They will not shut it down, for sure. Beer geeks (or enthusiasts, if you prefer) are exactly what they are looking for to understand better the craft beer world. That’s the information that they are looking for at Ratebeer. It makes a lot of sense and I don’t understand why the’ve took so much time to do it. With the information found here, they will be able to follow up which are the market tendencies since it’s clear that craft beer is/will become a big slice of the market.
In a nutshell: business
In fairness, the acquisition contract could give him certain consent rights over certain decisions. Obviously, the contract is confidential (as all M&A contracts are), so we cannot know unless there was a specifically negotiated carveout in the contract with respect to publicizing that aspect of the transaction. If I were negotiating the contract, I would have tried to have as many of such rights as possible.
