Beer and Food Belong Together – So Why Does Swedish Law Disagree?

A ruling that defies its own country’s alcohol policy

In February 2026, Sweden’s Patent and Market Court of Appeal ruled against Poppels Bryggeri in a case brought by the Swedish Consumer Agency (Konsumentverket). The brewery had published Instagram posts in 2022 showing beer alongside food. No people, no party atmosphere, no call to purchase. Just beer and food, the combination that defines how most Europeans actually drink.

The court found this violated the Bildregel, the image rule in Sweden’s Alcohol Act, which limits advertising imagery to the drink itself, its raw ingredients, a single piece of packaging, or the brand. Notably, the Court of Appeal went further than the lower court, which had at least permitted a photo of a beer resting on the barrel it had been aged in as a legitimate production image. The appeal court prohibited that too. Poppels now faces a conditional fine of 500,000 Swedish kronor if it continues, and even showing the brewing process is off limits.

Mats Wahlstrom, CEO of Poppels Bryggeri, warned in the brewery’s response to the ruling that the outcome risks producing the opposite of its stated purpose:

“The ruling makes it nearly impossible to communicate about beer as part of a meal, a craft, or a culture. The risk is that the result is the exact opposite of the public health goal: that communication is reduced to product and price, without responsibility, without context, and without food. In practice being only allowed to show a product image and a price will drive consumption towards pure alcohol consumption of low-price products.”

The contradiction this exposes is stark. Swedish licensing law requires pubs and restaurants to maintain a genuine food offering to obtain a serving permit. The state retail monopoly Systembolaget promotes food pairings at the shelf and trains staff to make food recommendations. The entire architecture of Swedish alcohol policy rests on the premise that beer and food belong together, because that combination is associated with more moderate, responsible drinking. And yet the same state’s advertising rules now prohibit a brewery from showing precisely that combination, and from showing how the beer is even made.

As Magnus Pettersson Otterberg, marketing director at Poppels, put it:

“That alcohol should be consumed with food has been one of the cornerstones on which Sweden has built its alcohol policy. We find it hard to see how you are supposed to do the right thing as a company when those who take responsibility are punished.”

A 1970s law applied to a 2026 brewing landscape

The Bildregel was substantially tightened in the 1970s, when concerns about mass-market alcohol promotion were well-founded. Television advertising linked beer and spirits to glamour, lifestyle, and social aspiration. Restricting what could appear in those images made sense in that context.

What the legislators of that era could not anticipate was a craft brewing landscape of hundreds of small independent producers whose communications serve a fundamentally different purpose. Showing a beer next to food, or in the production environment where it was made, is informative rather than manipulative. It is the kind of honest product communication that responsible consumption depends on. Applied literally, the Bildregel treats a small brewery’s Instagram post on the same terms as a Super Bowl advertisement from a global lager conglomerate. That proportionality has been lost entirely.

There is a competitive dimension that compounds the problem. Swedish law applies to Swedish producers. A brewery based in Denmark or Italy can publish content into Swedish social media feeds that a Swedish brewery cannot. The same image reaches the same Swedish consumer; only the domestic producer faces legal consequences. This raises a legitimate question about compatibility with EU internal market principles. Measures that restrict the free movement of goods must be proportionate to the harm they prevent. Whether a rule that bans beer-and-food imagery while the state retail monopoly actively promotes food pairings satisfies that test is, at minimum, debatable. Poppels has indicated it is prepared to take the question to the EU Court of Justice if necessary, which would have significant implications for comparable restrictions across member states.

What EBCU Is Asking For

EBCU is not calling for the removal of alcohol advertising regulation. Restrictions on lifestyle advertising, appeals targeting young people, and mass-market pressure to drink more remain legitimate. The question is whether the Bildregel, as currently written and applied, is proportionate to any of those concerns.

We call on the Swedish government to review the image rule with proportionality as the explicit test: does it prevent genuinely harmful advertising, or does it now primarily prevent honest, product-focused communication that informed consumers have every reason to receive? The answer, in the case of beer shown next to food, is clear.

We also call attention to this case as part of a wider pattern across Europe, where alcohol laws written for a different era are being applied to small independent producers without regard for whether they fit. EBCU’s Manifesto commits us to ensuring that beer consumers are well informed and supported by instructive information about quality beers. That commitment requires regulatory frameworks that allow producers to communicate honestly. The bildregel, as applied to Poppels, does not.