You are so right about AB's consistency. I home-brew and am a certified cicerone. One of the absolutely hardest things to do in brewing is having consistency from batch to batch. One of the things that AB has been able to do to help here is develop innovative food chemistry processes to test ingredients prior to use and a chemical understanding of all the flavor compounds in their product so they can blend different brew batches together prior to packaging to achieve the same ratios of flavoring compounds. Both of which are processes largely unavailable to smaller breweries and home brewers.

Consistency in your product is crucial in the food and beverage industry, because a buyer needs to know what they're getting. If you've already successfully sold them on your product, the repeat sale is only going to happen if they can be assured they're going to get the same thing they liked the first time. Nobody in the industry understands the importance of consistency better than Anheuser-Busch. McDonald's is right there with them on understanding this. Food and beverages are products like anything else, and just like with any product, once you achieve product-market fit, it's important not to make changes that would eliminate or chip away at the fit you have with your customer base.