South African media personality MacGyver ‘MacG’ Mukwevho says he faced resistance from breweries when seeking a producer for his Chillers Lager beer, eventually finding a brewery in Namibia willing to manufacture the product.
Mukwevho said this during the official launch of Chillers Lager in South Africa on Wednesday, where he spoke about the challenges of entering a market dominated by established beer brands.
“Everybody we spoke to, like all our partners, all the retailers, they were like, guys, don’t you dare do it because there’s like a beer mafia and no one ever goes against the beer mafia,” Mukwevho said.
He said the warnings motivated him to continue with the project rather than abandon it.
“When someone tells me I can’t do something, that’s when I want to do it,” he said.
Mukwevho said the team initially approached breweries in South Africa but struggled to find one willing to produce the beer.
“When we started speaking to breweries in the country, all of them said no,” he said.
He said they eventually found a brewery in Namibia capable of producing Chillers Lager.
“If you check on the bottle, it says produced and bottled in Namibia, because no one in the country wanted to make it for us,” Mukwevho said.
He said the team had struggled to find a producer willing to take on established competitor South African Breweries (SAB).
The launch marks the introduction of Chillers Lager to the South African market, with the product manufactured in Namibia.
