With InBev executives moving into the offices of Anheuser-Busch, now might be the time to wonder: What about the distributors?

Anheuser-Busch gets its beer to stores, bars and clubs by selling it to a network of hundreds of distributors, who ship it throughout their exclusive territories. In many cases, the distributorships go back two or three generations and carry only Anheuser-Busch beer (or alliance brands like InBev’s Stella Artois). These are tight relationships, and Anheuser-Busch places a lot of value in keeping things that way.

For months now, or possibly longer, Anheuser-Busch has been encouraging its wholesalers to merge where it could create more efficient operations. Even though A-B has many more distributors than Chicago-based MillerCoors, in many cases the A-B distributorships are much smaller than their competitors. A-B sees the possibility for its wholesalers to save money by combining warehouses and other operations. So far, the brewer has been gently nudging its wholesalers down the consolidation track, executives say.

Here’s the question: Will the guys from InBev push harder, leaning on distributors to get more efficient, fast? As it was courting Anheuser-Busch, Belgium-based InBev said all the right things about supporting the middle tier of the beer business. Now that InBev is in the driver’s seat, we will see if the famously hard-charging company retains Anheuser-Busch’s habit of giving distributors sweet deals.