For 24 years, Jill Vaughn has been pondering what kind of beer to have… and then making a batch of it, just to see if it tastes the way she anticipated.
Her job title is a mouthful – Process and Product Development Manager, North America, Anheuser-Busch – but it sums up her work at Anheuser-Busch InBev’s U.S. headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. Vaughn leads a team that develops, tests, and brings to market new varieties of beer from scratch.
“I love working on new products and innovations,” she said. “I love the art of brewing, the creativity of brewing. Basically we’re taking trends and insights from customers and translating that need from the written word into the actual product. To go into the grocery store and see 20 things you’ve had a hand in; it’s pretty amazing.”
Vaughn holds a master’s degree in food science and recently completed a certificate in sensory and consumer science from the University of California, Davis. She went to work at Anheuser-Busch straight out of grad school as a group manager at a brewery.
“You can’t understand Anheuser-Busch until you’ve worked in a brewery,” she said. “Having that background of working with my peers, the brewers, making day-to-day decisions that impact the quality of product, and making sure it is absolutely meeting the standards we expect of our beers.”
She spent four years at the Fort Collins, CO brewery before moving to St. Louis, where she eventually started working as part of the innovation team.
“Back then, we probably launched three to five things a year, specialty products,” she said. “Michelob Ultra was one of the new products we launched back then, and we worked on Bud Light Lime.”
But today, leading a team dedicated to innovation in product development, Vaughn says they’re much more proactive, responding to the changing tastes of the public. They’re also free to put just about anything they want through the brewing process to see how it tastes. There are misses, of course, but a fair share of hits, as well.
One of their biggest hits was Bud Light Lime-A-Rita.
“What is so interesting about that development is it is really a cross section of things that happened to knock that product out of the park,” said Vaughn. “A pre-mixed cocktail was not new; a small, 8-ounce can was not new. But looking at trends, customers wanted something that was refreshing, didn’t involve making anything complicated, and was good-tasting. We made a totally awesome product and put it in a unique can that made it very flexible in terms of handling.”
It certainly hit a nerve with their audience. Plug “Lime-A-Rita” into your favorite search engine and you’ll find lists of “hacks” that suggest all sorts of ways to serve it. That kind of customer response is really gratifying to Vaughn – and is part of the reason she got her certificate from UC Davis.
“I wanted to understand consumer behavior and how consumers react to innovation,” she said. “This way, I make sure that I am not making new products that I want, but what our consumers really want.”
A product doesn’t have to be a runaway hit to be successful, though. For instance, Vaughn and her team tried brewing flavors to match staple St. Louis foods like… pretzels.
“We actually developed a beer that literally tastes like a freshly baked pretzel,” she said. “That was actually launched as Shock Top Twisted Pretzel Wheat. But that one was pretty normal.”
As for the not-so-normal, they also tried to match another St. Louis favorite: the gooey butter cake.
“We brewed it with wheat and cream cheese,” she said. “That actually turned out pretty good, but I don’t know how scalable it is.”
As for the not-so-successful attempts? Well, there was that time when they tried to use tomatoes in the brewhouse.
“I’ve also been trying to get someone on my team to do a sushi beer,” she said, paused, then added, “We haven’t gotten to that one. But to brew something like that would be pretty cool to me.”
Having an employer that supports that kind of outside-the-brewpub thinking means a lot to Vaughn and her team, because it shows that Anheuser-Busch isn’t resting and producing just its traditional lager to the exclusion of everything else. It trusts the instincts of its brewers.
“We like to play, just like other brewers, big and small, to see how far out there we can go,” she said.
So, Vaughn has the freedom to try and make beer out of just about anything and the resources to find and perfect varieties that will appeal to the broader beer-drinking public. Is this the best job Vaughn could imagine having? “Oh, yeah!” she answers quickly and with a laugh. “I love what I do. It’s like being a chef, but I get to work in a brewery.”
