One of America’s once-dominant beer brands is being discontinued after more than 175 years.

Schlitz Premium, a beer brand that traces its roots to Milwaukee in the 1840s and was once among the largest breweries in the country, is being put “on hiatus,” parent company Pabst Brewing Co. confirmed Friday after Wisconsin Brewing Company announced it would brew the brand’s final batch later this month.

“Unfortunately, we have seen continued increases in our costs to store and ship certain products and have had to make the tough choice to place Schlitz Premium on hiatus,” Zac Nadile, Pabst head of brand strategy, said in a statement to Milwaukee Magazine.

“Any brand or packaging configuration that is put on hiatus is still a cherished part of our history and hopefully our future. We continually look for opportunities to bring back beloved brands, and customer feedback is important in shaping those discussions.”

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The brand was founded in 1849 as the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Getty Images)

The Schlitz brand became famous for its longtime slogan, “the beer that made Milwaukee famous,” and was once the nation’s largest brewery before Anheuser-Busch overtook it in the late 1950s.

The company was originally founded in 1849 after August Krug opened a tavern brewery in Milwaukee. Joseph Schlitz later took over the business after marrying Krug’s widow and helped transform it into one of the world’s largest beer brands.

Schlitz rose to prominence after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, when the brewery shipped beer to Chicago as residents struggled to access clean drinking water.

“It’s a nostalgia factor,” Joseph Conforti, general manager of Milwaukee Brat House, told ABC7 Chicago. “People from out of town are surprised that they still make it.”

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Cars on Woodhaven Boulevard drive past a Schlitz beer billboard in Queens, New York, on Oct. 1, 1960. (Walter Leporati/Getty Images)

Schlitz began losing popularity in the 1970s after cost-cutting recipe changes altered the beer’s flavor. The brand was later sold to Stroh Brewing in 1982 before Pabst acquired it in 1999.

Kirby Nelson, brewmaster at Wisconsin Brewing Company, said the company wanted to give the historic beer brand a proper farewell after learning production was ending.

“We decided that, Schlitz being what Schlitz was, it deserved a proper sendoff. One with dignity and respect,” Nelson said.

A can of Schlitz beer, produced by Pabst Brewing Company. (Getty Images)

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Wisconsin Brewing Company said it plans to brew “the last Schlitz” at its Verona, Wisconsin, brewery on May 23, with a limited release scheduled for June 27. Milwaukee-area bars and breweries are also planning farewell events tied to the final batches.

Representatives for Schlitz and Pabst Brewing Co. did not immediately respond to FOX Business’ request for comment.

The rapid digitalization of the global economy, combined with heightened geopolitical tensions, has significantly increased the frequency and severity of cyberattacks, posing a serious threat to global financial stability. The financial sector is particularly vulnerable, as sophisticated attacks targeting sensitive data and critical infrastructure can erode market confidence, cause deposit outflows, and trigger systemic shocks.

Key Points

• Rising Threat Landscape: Cyberattacks against financial institutions have more than doubled since the pandemic, with the magnitude of extreme losses from such incidents quadrupling to $2.5 billion since 2017.
• Systemic Risk: Financial firms, particularly banks, are primary targets. Successful attacks can lead to bank runs, market volatility, and the disruption of critical national payment systems, as evidenced by recent events in Lesotho and the United States.
• Third-Party Vulnerabilities: Increased reliance on third-party IT providers and emerging AI technologies expands the attack surface, creating the risk of widespread, simultaneous outages across multiple institutions.
• Policy Gaps: Many countries, especially in developing markets, lack sufficient national cybersecurity strategies or dedicated regulations to address these systemic threats.
• Recommended Actions: The IMF advocates for:
  • Enhanced board-level cybersecurity expertise and better organizational “cyber hygiene.”
  • Regular systemic risk assessments regarding institutional interconnectedness.
  • Improved data collection, incident reporting, and information sharing among financial participants.
  • Strengthened international cooperation to combat cross-border cyber threats.
• Resilience Focus: Since total prevention is unlikely, the sector must prioritize robust response and recovery procedures to ensure the continuity of critical business services during and after an attack.

To mitigate these risks, the IMF emphasizes that firms and regulators must move beyond individual defense mechanisms to establish comprehensive national and international cybersecurity frameworks that prioritize systemic resilience, improved governance, and standardized incident reporting.

To strengthen resilience in the financial sector, authorities should develop an adequate national cybersecurity strategy accompanied by effective regulation and supervisory capacity that should encompass:

• Periodically assessing the cybersecurity landscape and identifying potential systemic risks from interconnectedness and concentrations, including from third-party service providers.
• Encouraging cyber “maturity” among financial sector firms, including board-level access to cybersecurity expertise, as supported by the chapter’s analysis which suggests that better cyber-related governance may reduce cyber risk.
• Improving cyber hygiene of firms—that is, their online security and system health (such as antimalware and multifactor authentication)—and training and awareness.
• Prioritizing data reporting and collection of cyber incidents, and sharing information among financial sector participants to enhance their collective preparedness.

While cyber incidents will occur, the financial sector needs the capacity to deliver critical business services during these disruptions. To this end, financial firms should develop, and test, response and recovery procedures and national authorities should have effective response protocols and crisis management frameworks in place.

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Some careers are built through one major breakthrough. Others are built through years of steady decisions, small improvements, and a willingness to adapt. For Ian Reight, success in medicine came from learning how to stay calm, think ahead, and embrace change long before many others did.

Today, Reight is known as a general surgeon, healthcare leader, and former chief of surgery who helped guide teams through changing technology and growing demands inside modern hospitals. But his story started far away from operating rooms and robotic surgery systems.

Growing up in Maryland, Reight spent part of his early life as a volunteer firefighter and paramedic. The work exposed him to pressure, urgency, and responsibility at a young age.

“I learned early that people look for leadership when situations become chaotic,” Reight says. “You do not always have time for perfect decisions. You have to stay focused and move forward.”

That lesson would shape nearly every stage of his career.

How Ian Reight Built His Career in Medicine

Before entering medicine, Reight studied psychology at the University of Maryland College Park. Later, he earned his medical degree from the Medical University of the Americas.

He says studying psychology gave him an advantage many physicians overlook.

“Medicine is about people as much as science,” he explains. “You can be technically skilled, but if you cannot communicate well, patients and teams lose confidence.”

As Reight moved into surgery, he quickly realized the profession required far more than medical knowledge alone. Surgeons often lead teams during high-pressure situations where timing, communication, and trust all matter.

Over time, he took on larger leadership roles. He served as medical staff president, chief of surgery, medical director of a breast center, and medical director of wound care and hyperbaric medicine.

Each position brought different challenges. Some involved patient care. Others focused on managing teams, solving operational problems, and improving hospital systems.

“You cannot only think like a surgeon,” Reight says. “You also have to think about how every part of the hospital works together.”

Why Ian Reight Embraced Robotic Surgery Early

One of the biggest ideas that influenced Reight’s career was his willingness to adapt to new technology instead of resisting it.

As robotic surgery became more common in hospitals, many physicians were cautious about changing long-established methods. Reight chose a different approach. He became deeply involved in robotic surgery and eventually served as a lead robotic surgeon.

“At first, people naturally questioned whether it would become the future,” he says. “But medicine always evolves. You either learn with it or fall behind.”

Robotic surgery introduced greater precision and helped reduce recovery times for many patients. Reight believed the technology could improve patient outcomes if surgeons approached it with the right mindset and training.

“The technology itself is not enough,” he explains. “You still need discipline, preparation, and strong decision-making.”

His openness to innovation became one of the defining themes of his career. Rather than staying comfortable, he focused on learning continuously and helping teams adjust during periods of change.

“The moment you stop learning is the moment you become ineffective,” Reight says.

Leadership Lessons From the Operating Room

As Reight’s responsibilities grew, so did his focus on leadership. He believes many of the same principles that guide surgery also apply to business, management, and life.

In surgery, preparation matters. Communication matters. Consistency matters.

According to Reight, those same habits help organizations succeed during uncertain periods.

“People want leaders who stay calm when things become difficult,” he says. “Panic spreads quickly in any environment.”

During his years in leadership positions, Reight often worked between physicians, nurses, administrators, and staff members with different priorities and pressures. Keeping everyone aligned was not always easy.

He says one of the biggest mistakes leaders make is focusing only on their own responsibilities instead of understanding the bigger picture.

“You have to understand the pressures other people are dealing with,” he explains. “That is how strong teams are built.”

His leadership style focused less on authority and more on trust, communication, and consistency over time.

What Ian Reight Says About Long-Term Success

Reight believes long careers are rarely built through dramatic moments alone. Instead, they come from repeated habits and steady improvement.

That mindset helped him move through multiple areas of healthcare leadership while continuing to practice medicine directly with patients.

“Success usually comes from small decisions repeated over many years,” he says. “People often underestimate consistency.”

Outside the hospital, Reight enjoys spending time with his dogs and cooking, which he says helps him stay balanced after years in demanding medical environments.

Interestingly, he sees similarities between cooking and surgery.

“There is timing, preparation, and attention to detail involved in both,” he says with a laugh. “You learn patience very quickly.”

Looking back, Reight says the biggest ideas that shaped his career were not complicated. Stay adaptable. Keep learning. Communicate clearly. Stay calm under pressure.

Those ideas helped him navigate medicine during a period of enormous technological and organizational change.

And in an industry where change never stops, Reight believes those lessons matter now more than ever.

“Leadership is not about having all the answers,” he says. “It is about staying steady enough for other people to trust you when challenges come.”

Radar, a startup backed by American Eagle CEO Jay Schottenstein that helps retailers manage in-store inventory and cut back on theft and lost merchandise, reached unicorn status with its latest funding round, CNBC has learned.  

The company, founded in 2013 by Spencer Hewett, raised $170 million at a valuation of over $1 billion in its series B funding round, which was co-led by Gideon Strategic Partners and Nimble Partners with participation from Align Ventures. 

The company also counts Schottenstein among its investors. He said American Eagle was the first retailer to implement Radar’s technology across its stores.

Through Radar, “American Eagle has unlocked greater inventory visibility, empowered our associates and sharpened our insights,” said Schottenstein. “With inventory digitized in real-time, we have enabled our creative, operations and technology teams to place their focus on creating seamless, customer-first experiences that define the American Eagle brand.”

Radar also works with Gap‘s Old Navy and other major retailers, covering more than 1,400 stores. 

When Hewett started the company with a boost from venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s fellowship for young entrepreneurs, his goal was to create a better way to do instant checkout, but the strategy evolved to inventory management. Using hardware mounted to the ceilings of brick-and-mortar stores, Radar’s technology can read any radio-frequency identification, or RFID, tag with 99% accuracy, the company said.

The tech addresses one of the most challenging aspects of running a retail business: inventory management. Between figuring out how much product to make, deciding where to send it and then keeping track of it once it arrives, retailers face a persistent challenge in overseeing their inventory. Errors can lead to lost sales and crush profit margins.

Radar primarily functions at the store level. It enables in-store employees to quickly hunt down an item a customer wants, addressing a pain point among shoppers who come to a store to buy a product listed as available online only to find it’s actually out of stock. 

“If a customer asks them, ‘I want this in a different size’ they can immediately see where in the store it is, no matter where it’s been moved, and get it for the customer,” Hewett told CNBC in an interview. “It gives them certainty that they can actually help the customer without them, like, saying we might have it in the back and disappear for like 15 minutes and then come back and be like, ‘Okay, actually the inventory system said we had it, but we don’t have it. I can’t find it.’”

As a result, some of Radar’s retail clients who offer a buy online and pick up in store option have seen order cancellation rates go from 25% to 3%, said Hewett. 

The tech also helps managers to keep a better eye on deliveries and more easily identify shrink, or inventory loss from theft, error or damage. Shrink sometimes comes from would-be customers stealing merchandise, but it’s murkier than that in many cases. It also frequently results from employees across the supply chain taking items or from administrative error.

For example, if a store expects a shipment of 100 T-shirts but receives 80, either because of theft at a distribution center or a packing error, it can be hard for a store manager to identify it, leading to out-of-stocks and lost sales. 

“You don’t have the labor hours to go and count every box that gets shipped, so you have to accept what they say is there and assume it’s true,” said Hewett. “With Radar, like, you actually have a real time check to make sure that it is true, and then flag it immediately if it’s not.” 

The company declined to share overall customer data showing the effectiveness of the tech, but Hewett said one of his clients saw a 60% reduction in shrink after launching Radar at one of its stores. 

When measuring shrink, companies tend to look at it on a net basis, factoring in both overages and shortages. One company may have a 15% shortage and a 15% overage, reflecting a net shrink of 0%, but that would also mean inventory was off by 30% for the customer, Hewett said. 

“Sizes and colors matter, like, if you don’t have my size, I’m not going to buy it, therefore, that’s a lost sale, and it shows up in your revenue and margin,” Hewett said. “We effectively eliminate that issue to make sure you’re always in stock in the sizes and colors and products that you want to have.” 

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Britain’s labour market has buckled under the twin weight of geopolitical turmoil and stubbornly high interest rates, with the unemployment rate climbing unexpectedly to 5 per cent and payrolls plunging by 100,000 in April, the steepest monthly fall in years.

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Tuesday showed the jobless rate edging up from 4.9 per cent in the first quarter, confounding City forecasters who had pencilled in no change. The fall in payrolls was sharply worse than the 28,000 decline economists had anticipated, and follows a 28,000 contraction in March, signalling that the cooling that has gripped the British jobs market for the best part of two years is now hardening into something closer to a freeze.

Job vacancies tumbled to their lowest level in five years, an ominous bellwether for small and medium-sized employers already squeezed by elevated borrowing costs and faltering consumer demand. The Bank of England, which only weeks ago warned that hiring intentions were weakening, now expects the unemployment rate to peak at 5.1 per cent in the second quarter, in line with its April 2026 Monetary Policy Report.

Iran war casts long shadow over hiring

Behind the figures lies a stark geopolitical backdrop. The United States–Iran war has now entered its eleventh week, with no immediate prospect of a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supply has historically transited. The closure has driven a fresh spike in global energy prices and forced UK businesses, from manufacturers to hospitality operators, to put hiring and capital expenditure on ice. The supply shock, as Business Matters has previously reported, has pushed oil close to $120 a barrel and rattled global markets.

For SMEs, the message from the boardroom is plainly defensive. Recruitment freezes, deferred investment and rationed inventory have become the order of the day across sectors most exposed to discretionary consumer spending. The ONS noted that the sharpest declines in vacancies and payrolls have come from hospitality and retail, two pillars of the British high street that were already grappling with rising employment costs before the energy shock landed. The squeeze echoes earlier warnings that hospitality has been hit hardest in the wake of recent tax rises.

Pay growth slips below price rises

Wage growth, once the great hope of households battered by the cost-of-living crisis, is also losing steam. Average weekly earnings excluding bonuses slowed to 3.4 per cent between January and March, down from 3.6 per cent, leaving pay rising only fractionally above the March inflation reading of 3.3 per cent. Including bonuses, the picture was slightly stronger, with average wages up 4.1 per cent compared with 3.9 per cent in the previous rolling quarter.

That fragile real-terms gain is unlikely to last. Headline inflation, which had been on a steady downward path, is expected to dip to 3 per cent in April when temporary government measures to cap household energy bills came into force, but economists warn the relief will be short-lived as the Bank of England weighs interest rate decisions against the Middle East oil shock. With Brent crude trading well above pre-war levels, food and fuel inflation are likely to reassert themselves over the summer.

Liz McKeown, director of economic statistics at the ONS, said the labour market remained “soft”, noting that vacancies were at their lowest level in five years and unemployment higher than a year ago. “The number of payroll employees continued to fall in the three months to March, while regular wage growth slowed further,” she said. “Lower-paying sectors such as hospitality and retail have seen some of the largest falls in vacancies and payroll numbers, both in recent months and over the last year.”

Real pay set to slide

For workers, the implications are sobering. Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG, warned that with both private and public sector pay growth easing, “workers are likely to face a period of declining real pay, as headline inflation is set to outpace earnings, driven by higher energy and food prices.” Martin Beck, chief economist at WPI Strategy, added that “the latest labour market data suggest the UK jobs market is starting to feel the repercussions of higher energy prices, geopolitical uncertainty and weaker business confidence.”

For Britain’s 5.5 million small businesses, the data is more than a statistical curiosity, it is a warning shot. With borrowing costs unlikely to fall meaningfully before clarity returns to the Gulf, and consumer-facing sectors bearing the brunt of weaker demand, the second half of 2026 looks set to test the resilience of the SME economy in ways not seen since the pandemic.

The Bank of England’s next move will be closely watched. Threadneedle Street faces an unenviable choice between cutting rates to support a softening labour market and holding firm against the inflationary echoes of the Hormuz crisis. Either way, the era of cheap hiring and easy growth that defined much of the post-pandemic recovery now feels firmly behind us.

Amy Ingham

Amy is a newly qualified journalist specialising in business journalism at Business Matters with responsibility for news content for what is now the UK’s largest print and online source of current business news.