Miller Lite puts bar smells in a candle to support service workers

There’s something about the smell of a bar. It conjures up memories and establishes a time and place, and it’s been near impossible to experience across most of North America during a year of lockdowns and on-premise closures.

With the return of normalcy in sight, Miller Lite is celebrating bar fans’ anticipation by bringing the distinct smell of bars home with a limited-edition candle collection.

Coming in three scents – Dive Bar, Beer Garden and Game Day – the candles are a light-hearted way to celebrate the reopening of bars and restaurants across the U.S. and Canada, says Carol Krienik, associate marketing manager for Miller Lite.

“We know people are so eager to be shoulder-to-shoulder again in a bar like it used to be,” she says. “In the environment we’re in right now, Miller Time can’t happen in the bars we love, so we’re bringing that experience to our drinkers as much as we can so they can have that Miller Time feeling at home.”

All three candles call to mind the atmosphere of some of our favorite gathering places.

  • Dive Bar mixes scents of musk, tobacco, pine and yeast to conjure “dim lights, a faint glass clinking and the sinus-clearing sensation of a puddle that somehow exists indoors.”
  • Beer Garden features green moss, warm pretzel, cracked wood and sunburn to “evoke a day spent outdoors as the scent of tropical sunscreens mixes with the staple garden eats that fill the air.”
  • Game Day’s scents are salted peanut, jalapeno and cracked leather, mixing “top notes of the most ordered bar snacks on game day with the subtle power of comfortable cracked leather, the ideal backdrop to a freshly opened beer.”

Available for $20 online, all proceeds of the candles go to support the United States Bartenders' Guild, a nonprofit that supports bartenders and other service industry professionals, as well as the Canadian hospitality industry.

The effort represents the continuation of Molson Coors’ support for the U.S. Bartenders' Guild. Last year, Molson Coors donated $1 million to the USBG National Charity Foundation’s Bartender Emergency Assistance Program, a relief campaign that aids bartenders and other service professionals. Over the course of the year, Miller Lite continued its support of the fund through a number of virtual events.

Unsurprisingly, the service industry was hit hard by restrictions put in place to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. In many states, bars and restaurants closed during the height of the pandemic.

More than a million jobs were lost, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with the sector’s unemployment rate leaping to 16.7% in December, up from 5% from the same month a year earlier.

The limited-edition candles are available across North America, with the exception of Quebec and New Brunswick.