U.S. Tourists Put Strain on Cuba’s Beer Stock

The ubiquitous fridges that dispense beer in Cuba’s bars, cafes and petrol stations are running out of the island’s favorite Cristal and Bucanero brands as a surge in American tourists and the proliferation of new private watering holes put the nation’s main brewery under strain.

Brewer Bucanero needs a new plant to keep pace with demand from tourists and a burgeoning private restaurant sector that competes with state-run outlets for supplies, Mayle Gonzalez, a sales executive at the company, said on Saturday.

Bucanero, a joint venture between the Cuban government and Belgium’s Anheuser Busch InBev, also makes the Communist-led country’s most widely consumed brew, Cristal.

Local media reported that Cuba’s breweries signed contracts this week for more than 33m cases of beer at a business in Havana, considerably more than their current production capability will allow. Bucanero is reportedly planning to import 3m cases of beer from Dominica to keep up with demand.

After US president Barack Obama eased travel restrictions to Cuba in February, American tourists have started descending on Cuba in significant numbers, a trend that is expected to continue.

Hundreds will step off a cruise ship from Miami into the city in May, the first such voyage since the US embargo that followed Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

While the embargo remains in place, ordinary Cubans have warmed to their “Yanqui” visitors, especially after Obama’s visit to Cuba in March, the first by a sitting US president in 88 years.

Cuba received a record 3.5 million visitors last year, up 17% from 2014. American visitors rose 77% to 161,000, in addition to hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans, testing the country’s supply of hotel room, rental cars and beer.

The most recent tourism figures, for January, showed a similar pace of growth.

Small restaurants that cater to both tourists and Cubans have blossomed on the Caribbean island since president Raul Castro five years ago formalised changes designed to remove the Communist state from many small-scale economic activities.

“Private bars can go out and find supplies where they can, I can only sell what the government gives me,” said the manager of a state-run bar that ran out of beer, while a private bar upstairs had a fridge full of cold bottles.

Source: Reuters