Pabst Blue Ribbon offers $20,000 reward to help find its missing beer

By DEE-ANN DURBIN, AP Business Writer

Pabst Blue Ribbon wants its beer back, and it’s offering a reward to help that happen.

Greig DeBow, the CEO of Pabst Brewing Co., said Wednesday that the company will pay up to $20,000 to anyone who provides new information that leads to the recovery of 1,602 cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon and non-alcoholic Old Milwaukee beer. The beer went missing Aug. 17 in Southern California.

“I’m sure they look cool with a garage full of PBR,” DeBow said in a post on TikTok. “That’s actually not cool though. We want it back.”

Police in Montclair, California, said the beer was stolen from a warehouse in two separate incidents on the same day.

In the first heist, about $45,000 worth of beer headed to Tucson, Arizona, was picked up but never delivered, according to police. An hour later, a “purported subcontracting company” submitted fake documents to pick up another $25,000 worth of beer, Montclair police said. Both thefts occurred on Aug. 17 at an Anheuser-Busch distribution center about 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of Los Angeles.

All told, the thieves made off with 40,000 pounds of beer, Pabst said. Police estimated that the stolen beer was worth $70,000.

DeBow said the company wants the beer to be returned by Sept. 9. Anyone with information is asked to email hotline@pabst.com.

The theft was one of several recent high-profile food heists.

Late last year, 40,000 oysters, lobster worth $400,000 and a cache of crabmeat all were stolen in separate incidents within weeks of each other in New England.

And in March, Swiss food giant Nestlé said 413,793 KitKat brand chocolate bars bound for Poland were stolen after leaving its production site in Italy.