On a current steamy Sunday afternoon, clients strolled by way of the aisles of Glenn Miller’s Beer & Soda Warehouse, the place overhead followers circulated the recent air.

People heading to picnics, commencement events and different get-togethers in Lemoyne, a Pennsylvania neighborhood simply throughout the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg, breezed into the shop, passing myriad shows of beers, with circumstances of high manufacturers stacked excessive.

Next to 30-packs of Miller Lite, on sale for $24.99, sat a stack of Bud Light. A big banner above it famous that, after a rebate, a 30-pack value a mere $8.99.

Andy Wagner, the supervisor and an 18-year veteran of the shop, stated the Miller Lite was promoting effectively. And the Bud Light? Not a lot.

“At this point, it’s cheaper than some of the cases of water we’re selling in the back,” Mr. Wagner stated, noting that gross sales of Bud Light on the retailer since mid-April had been down 45 p.c from a yr in the past. “It’s just not moving like it used to.”

Nearly three months after the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a video on her Instagram account to advertise a Bud Light contest, setting off online outrage from the suitable and a boycott, the beer model remains to be struggling to win again loyal, longtime clients.

For greater than twenty years, Bud Light was the best-selling beer within the United States. Its gross sales exceeded $5 billion final yr, roughly 9 p.c of Anheuser-Busch InBev’s income. But because the boycott, Bud Light has been dethroned by Modelo Especial. In the 4 weeks that resulted in mid-June, the amount of Bud Light bought nationally plunged a median of 29 p.c from a yr earlier, in accordance with knowledge from the analysis agency NIQ, analyzed by the consulting agency Bump Williams.

Anheuser-Busch’s inventory has additionally dropped greater than 15 p.c since early April. The firm didn’t reply to a request for remark for this text.

In an interview on Wednesday with “CBS This Morning,” Brendan Whitworth, the chief govt of Anheuser-Busch North America Zone, acknowledged that the previous few weeks had been “challenging” for the model.

“The conversation surrounding Bud Light has moved away from beer,” Mr. Whitworth stated, including that he took accountability for the controversy’s impression on the corporate’s staff, clients and distribution companions. “The conversation has become divisive, and Bud Light really doesn’t belong there.”

When requested if he would run the marketing campaign with a transgender influencer once more, Mr. Whitworth didn’t immediately reply.

“There’s a big social conversation taking place right now, and big brands are right in the middle of it,” he stated. “And it’s not just our industry or Bud Light. It’s happening in retail. It’s happening in fast food.

“And so for us, what we need to understand is, deeply understand and appreciate, is the consumer and what they want, what they care about and what they expect from big brands.”

With the summer season gross sales season effectively underway — the 4 months between May and August make up as a lot as 40 p.c of annual beer gross sales — the query swirling round Bud Light is whether or not the hunch is short-term or the brand new regular.

“Here we are about 10 weeks into it, and we’re still seeing double-digit declines in volumes nationally,” stated Bump Williams, who runs the consulting agency that bears his identify. “This is no longer an anomaly. This is a trend of concern.”

Indeed, most bigger beer distributors or wholesalers — middlemen who purchase manufacturers from brewers like Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors after which promote them to shops, eating places and bars — consider the fallout will final greater than six months, in accordance with a survey launched this month by the Wall Street funding financial institution Jefferies. A 3rd of distributors consider the impression on Bud Light can be everlasting.

Mr. Wagner stated Anheuser-Busch had made a mistake when its advertising and marketing broke what he referred to as “bar rules.” That means “no politics, no religion.” He famous that Glenn Miller’s had by no means allowed native politicians to place up indicators in or across the retailer in order to not alienate clients.

When requested how lengthy he thought the gross sales declines would linger, Mr. Wagner shrugged. “I’ve seen longtime Bud Light customers trying other beers,” he stated. “If they find something they like, they may not come back.”

Beer distributors, a lot of them unbiased or family-owned companies, are aware of the drop in Bud Light gross sales.

Steve Tatum, the overall supervisor of family-owned Bama Budweiser in Montgomery, Ala., paid for a neighborhood radio commercial to debate the backlash to Bud Light. “We, too, at Bama Budweiser are upset about it and have made our feelings known to the top leadership at Anheuser-Busch,” Mr. Tatum stated within the advert. He added that his firm, an unbiased wholesaler, employed “around 100 people who live here, work here, and our children go to school here.”

Mr. Tatum didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Anheuser-Busch additionally appears to be attempting to remind the general public of the folks behind the beer. On Wednesday, the corporate launched an advert marketing campaign, “We Make the Beer,” which focuses on the quite a few steps concerned in making beer, in addition to the people behind the method. It has additionally hinted that it could convey again the favored Bud Knight character in promoting as a part of its effort to maneuver previous the controversy.

The firm has additionally been shopping for again or swapping out circumstances of Bud Light sitting in distributor warehouses once they attain their “best by” dates. In June, the corporate unveiled a multitiered plan to its distributors that included gross sales incentive funds and reimbursement for freight and gas costs by way of the top of the yr, in accordance with Beer Business Daily.

For Glenn Miller’s, the repercussions from the Bud Light controversy haven’t had a lot of a enterprise impression. Operating since 1986, the retailer sells 1,500 manufacturers of beer in its 18,000-square-foot warehouse.

“So if a consumer decides against a Bud Light, which is now down 30 percent year to date, they are fine in finding something else to try,” Rodney Miller, the chief govt of Glenn Miller’s, stated in an electronic mail. (Mr. Miller based the retailer along with his father, Glenn.)

Mr. Wagner echoed these sentiments as he walked by way of the shop’s aisles.

“It’s not that they stopped drinking beer,” he stated of his clients. “They just stopped buying Bud Light.”