Lucky Lager - History

History

Lucky Lager was first commercially introduced in 1934 by the General Brewing Company. The General Brewing Company was founded in San Francisco, California by Eugene Selvage (who would remain owner and CEO until 1961). The following decade saw Lucky Lager grow to be the sales leader in the entire West. Lucky Lager Brewing Company opened a second brewery in Azusa, California in 1949. During the early fifties, a brand slogan was "It's Lucky When You Live in California." It was seen on many billboards in Northern California. The following decade saw Lucky Lager grow to be the sales leader in the entire West. It bought smaller breweries in Vancouver, Washington in 1950 and in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1960.

In the 1960s, Lucky Lager Brewing Company sponsored the Lucky International Open.
The Salt Lake City brewery was closed in 1967. Lucky Lager Brewing Company changed its name back to General Brewing between 1963 and 1969, and then changed its name to Lucky Breweries, Inc. in 1969. During the late 1960s, Lucky Lager's market share faltered among younger drinkers. This led to the ill-fated introduction of King Snedley's Beer. According to some accounts, King Snedley's was just Lucky Lager repackaged with a different brand and marketed toward counterculture hipsters. The new brand flopped and was withdrawn from the market, though it would reappear briefly in 1975.

In 1971, millionaire beer baron Paul Kalmanovitz bought Lucky Lager Brewing and again changed the name back to General Brewing Company. The Azusa, CA brewery was closed immediately. The San Francisco brewery was closed in 1978. This left Vancouver, WA and Cranston, RI as the only locations where Lucky Lager was brewed. In the late 1970s, General Brewing took advantage of the "generic brand" marketing craze in the US by producing beer with plain white labels emblazoned with the word BEER. Rumors surfaced that BEER was simply repackaged Lucky Lager. When the generic craze died, and the microbrewery movement took off, General had a hard time maintaining profitability as a brewer of inexpensive beers. The fact that Lucky Lager tasted no worse than expensively-advertised "premium" brands such as Budweiser or Miller did not impress a market of drinkers where image was frequently more important than taste. The brewery's fortunes began to decline.

After the Vancouver brewery shut down in July 1985, the Olympia Brewing Company in Tumwater, WA began to produce this lager. On July 1, 2003, this brewery was also closed. Since then, Lucky Lager has been brewed in Irwindale, CA, along with other brands such as Olympia and Rainier.