VSS and BA Speedway release

Our butts hurt from all those fingers pointin' their way in.

 

All of the butthurt, comes from UFIA

 

Picked up my bottles yesterday. They're delish.

 

Can we please concentrate on putting bev4less out of business first???

 

Sorry about that.

 

Del Mesa illegally resells constantly. I saw a bottle of Nelson a while back for $11.

 

And it's gone, as if it never happened. Maybe Mr. Mesa thought it wasn't such a good idea to advertise illegal resale of beer, after all.

 

It appears that he drank them all....

 

Just heard back from ABC. It pretty much clears up what we thought. Selling any non-distributed beer from outside of CA is illegal. The only way to sell non-distributed beer is if the CA brewery directly sells it to the business. That means someone cannot go to the brewery and buy the beer as an individual and then resell it.

I am now asking if there is someone we should contact if we notice this and feel so inclined to do so.

 

Same rule applies for non-distributed beers from within California as well I assume?

 

If the brewery is in CA, they can sell directly to a retailer (not the same as selling bottles togo and a liquor store buying those and then reselling them).

Here is the direct reply:

A retailer cannot import alcoholic beverages into California. The alcoholic beverages would have to be sent from out of state to a licensed importer in the State of California then the importer/wholesaler would have to sell it to the retailer. A retailer cannot purchase alcoholic beverages from an unlicensed source and resell it in their licensed premises. Retailers should not be purchasing beer from a brewery as a consumer then reselling that beer in their licensed premises.

 

Can you post the actual response they gave you? (Not because I don't believe you, I just want to see what they said specifically, particularly what part of the code they're talking about.)

 

here is the response about who to contact:

You, or anyone else, can contact the ABC District Office that has jurisdiction over the retail premises. You can find a list of our local district offices on our website under the “About Us” tab.

Here is a link to where she was talking about. I think it is about time we get rid of these beer scalpers
http://www.abc.ca.gov/distmap.html

 

Interesting that she did not cite any particular provision of the code to support that, although I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that its actually illegal to the breweries to self-distribute bottles to retailers period.

Maybe later I'll take a look at the code (which is under the Tied House regulations of the CA Business and Professions code) later on when, I'm not, you know sitting at work.

 

Hopefully reporting these people gets things changed. I'll be calling the local office whenever I see/read about illegal beer sales from now on.

 

I'm not really sure I understand why you guys are so gung-ho about “let’s put [X grey market merchant] out of business and report him to the ABC ourselves so he loses his liquor license” thing. These guys are not big corporations with huge pockets, they’re little guys that own singular liquor stores. Even assuming he makes a $100 ill-gotten profit off of selling 10 or even 20 bottles of special Speedway Stout, its not like the bottles ended up being poured down a sink or that Alesmith lost money on the deal. Its even more disconcerting because practically every one complaining about it in this thread got as many bottles of either BASS or VSS as they wanted and nobody who actually turned up at the correct sale time got turned away from buying as many bottles as they wanted.

And really, let's face it: the three-tier tied house system is basically Prohibition-era nonsense in the first place. Busting this guy for a three-tier violation seems petty, particularly when when the problem people have with him has nothing to do with our deep love and admiration for the three-tier system.

I don't think we should be reporting these places to the Government, we should be reporting them to the breweries so that they can make their own decisions whether to cut off the retailer or not.

 

I'm sure you're not working for a grey market store but it does sound like you are. In any case, IMO, its more about the principle. These stores are using an illegal tactic to gain a foothold on their market and keep the other little guys down. It's also no coincidence that these style stores tend to have the highest markups on everything. I have a friend who runs a beer bar/bottle shop and is doing business the right way and has been successful since he opened in February. We have bottle shares there but he refuses to sell or profit from anything that can be considered grey market, on the other hand, there's a shop I used to frequent that is crazy shady and I used to talk to their beer buyer regularly. I have constantly gotten calls and texts the last 2 AleSmith releases and for the DDG release asking me to sell him my bottles at a slight markup so he can sell the bottles out the back. I always say no, but frankly its getting old. So maybe I'm a dick for contemplating reporting the "mom & pop shop" but when they illegally get a foot up on the competition it isn't right.

 

That's absolute bullshit. If they don't want to face fines or the prospect of penalties that put their business in jeopardy, then they should follow the law, or at the very least, not flaunt the fact that they do something illegal. The fact that they make such a small return from the risk only reinforces the idea that it's a bad decision on their part.

 

I just don't think its a big deal at all since its not like these guys have lots and lots of bottles and in reality nobody actually cares about whether the tied-house laws were complied with or not. The real problem here is that people are upset that Alesmith's policy isn't being followed; therefore, in my opinion the problem should be brought up with Alesmith, not the ABC.

Its just a difference of opinion. There's no reason to get so upset.

 

Somebody may have mentioned it to somebody, maybe even before they stirred up the hornets nest on BA.

At this point, this is all pissing into the wind. Screen shots or not, there will never be any public evidence of Del Mesa reselling the Alesmith special releases.