CARLETON, Mich. (WXYZ) — A small-town bar in Monroe County is finding itself in the national spotlight after making an appearance in a Budweiser commercial set to air during this year's Super Bowl.
For a village of less than 3,000 people, moments in the spotlight are few and far between. However, in less than two weeks, the quaint little downtown of Carleton and the popular Carleton Hotel Bar will be seen by more than 120 million people.
“We're all looking at it like oh my gosh, that is the hotel bar!” longtime Carleton resident Chip Raines said.
“All the bars across the country and you pick Carleton?” another resident Sean Mulherin said.
Regulars at the Carleton Hotel Bar were stunned to see an aerial shot of their local hangout featured in Budweiser’s commercial for Super Bowl 59. The one person even more shocked than they are was the bar’s owner. He says he was never contacted by Budweiser and had no idea about the commercial.
“I wish there was more to it — it was just by chance,” the bar's owner John Kaczmarek said.
Kaczmarek only learned about his bar’s commercial cameo from a customer who saw it online, and word of their newfound fame has only spread since.
“My Bud rep was here today," Kaczmarek said. "He goes 'you know, me alone, (I) have 80 accounts. Think of how many accounts there are in the United States. How did they pick this?'”
That question has stumped Kaczmarek, who’s owned the bar for nearly 20 years. It’s often filled with regulars, two-thirds of which Kaczmarek says he knows by name.
“I probably know 60 to 70 percent of the clientele,” Kaczmarek said. “Everybody knows everybody, but that's the best thing of all that everybody knows everybody.”
“I've been coming in this bar since I was 21 years old,” said lifelong Carleton resident Phillip Turner, who also helped remodel the bar.
“I would say it's like the 'Cheers' of Monroe County," Raines said. "You walk in, everybody knows your name.”
“There's nothing like a small-town home hospitality,” patron Alex Wellman said.
Why Budweiser chose Carleton Hotel Bar is still unknown to Kaczmarek. It's possible even Budweiser doesn't know and the scene was simply generic stock footage of a small town that the editors put into the commercial.
However, these patrons say for a commercial like this, a local bar surrounded by small-town scenery in a building first built before Budweiser even existed all makes for the perfect setting.
“It's a small-town farm community and I thought it was really fitting for the commercial," Mulherin said. "Budweiser, they killed it.”
“I thought it was pretty cool because I did the outside work, of course," Turner said. "Nice view, nice shot.”
In a village of less than 3,000 people, those two to three seconds of fame will be talked about for years to come.
“Even with it just being a two-second, three-second aerial shot, still really cool," Wellman said. “It's really cool for the community to have something like that happen.”
“I absolutely love the commercial. I think it’s really cool,” Kaczmarek said. "We're a small town, a lot of people love it... It's really uplifting for us.”
You can catch the full advertisement during the Super Bowl or view it on Budweiser's YouTube page.
