“These kids are just pure losers… I mean they don’t smoke, they help their wives take care of the kids, and they’re not even alcoholics anymore.” -some 65-year-old man from Alabama rage-posting on Facebook while triple-fisting Bud Lights

Sure, Gen Z may doom-scroll TikTok for two hours before bed… but they’re also not crushing a 12-pack on a Tuesday. And that cultural detox is turning into a real hangover for Heineken.

The Dutch brewing giant Heineken announced it’s cutting up to 6,000 jobs (about 7% of its 87,000-person workforce) as part of what it’s calling “productivity savings.” Translation: the robots are getting promoted.

What’s the damage, you ask? Well, beer volumes slid between 1.2% and 2.4% over 2025 (depending on which metric you’re staring at), especially in Europe and the Americas. Apparently inflation, Ozempic, and Gen Z discovering mocktails have teamed up like the Big 3 Miami Heat (prime Lebron days).

However, while volumes dropped, adjusted operating profit still managed to rise 4.4%. Which means: “If they won’t drink more, we’ll just squeeze more out of what they do drink.” (Margin magic, baby.)

To help fix the gaping hole, Heineken’s outgoing CEO Dolf van den Brink is rolling out the company’s “EverGreen 2030” strategy… a very soothing name for what is essentially: brew smarter, fire faster. The brewer committed to $430-$540 million in annual savings. And yes, AI is “partly” responsible for the cuts. Partly.

(Source: The Guardian)

Van den Brink admitted that around 3,000 roles are moving into centralized business services where “technology digitization in general, and AI specifically,” will drive efficiency.

Which means somewhere in Amsterdam, a chatbot just got a corner office (and probably stock options).

The reductions won’t be isolated either. Brewery workers and white-collar roles alike are on the chopping block. Europe is seeing closures and consolidation, smaller markets are being merged into “clusters,” and back-office functions are being centralized. In other words, Heineken is taking what was once a decentralized, local-beer culture empire and methodically turning it into a very efficient spreadsheet.

While customers may be sobering up to the likes of which we’ve never seen… investors did a kegstand.

Shares rose roughly 4% on the news and are up mid-to-high single digits year-to-date. Apparently Wall Street prefers lean and mean over slightly tipsy and bloated.

It’s also important to mention Heineken still rang up roughly $31-32 billion in revenue… all thanks to emerging markets like Nigeria, Vietnam, and India still showing up thirsty.

With Europe and the Americas dialing it back (volumes off 2–3%) management has dialed back expectations too. Profit growth for 2026 is now pegged at 2% to 6%, instead of the previous 4% to 8% dream.

AI layoffs are turning corporate America into the Margin Hunger Games.

Roughly 55,000 U.S. job cuts last year were linked to automation. Amazon and Salesforce have embraced the “do more with less humans” philosophy, and Lufthansa plus Accenture are right behind them. (May the odds be ever in your LinkedIn.)

Even IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva warned that AI is hitting the labor market “like a tsunami,” and judging by the latest round of cuts, that wave has officially rolled into the brewery business.

At the same time, van den Brink is preparing to exit in May after nearly six years running the company, and there’s no successor waiting in the wings. He calls the timing a “logical transition moment,” which feels especially convenient given the layoffs and cost cuts unfolding underneath him.

It’s crazy, because investors have always believed that beer, tobacco, cigarettes (and I guess products like Zyn today) would never struggle to make sales. But that’s the reality we’re living in 2026. People are beating alcoholism at the greatest rate in history… yet somehow still can’t put their phones down long enough to spend time with their kids.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Amazon as mentioned in the article.