VIP membership & other deplorable practices...

Oddly enough, I don't think any gas stations near where I live now have free air, nor did those in my parents area in Denver. Quarters I believe is what they cost. Interesting to hear.

 

Wanting people to be able to buy shit in a store just screams "entitlement complex."

It's funny how many times people not in favor of this have been called "entitled", considering the entire fucking point is giving a particular group of people exclusive access to a product.

 

This is the most disingenous post I have read in quite some time.

The claim that a book can simply be printed in any quantity is accurate.

I am not in printing but I know that once a book is written there are no ingredients left to purchase, there is no limit to how much a printing press can handle, and unless there is some restrictions to contracting ink like there is on contracting the raw ingredients for beer, then that makes it unanimous that there indeed is no similarity between books and beer in any relevant possible way

 

Of course you realize that your solution will just piss off a whole different set of people. I am looking for the solution that will satisfy everybody. If there isn't one, and I am beginning to believe that you finally are admitting there isn't, than I repeat my original point, that if someone is going to be pissed off by the way things are, it just makes good business sense to try to make sure it isn't your best customers. Adding other rewards in the club, as this store does, to promote business is just the same theme extended in different ways to maximize the shopping enjoyment of your best customers while making a profit.

 

I don't see anything wrong with the point of people paying to buy beer...simple supply v. demand. If people have the cash to do it, cool. If they don't, cool. Pay up or shut up. I can't do things millionaires do, but I don't fucking cry about it. I don't think anybody else should either when it comes to a luxury good.

 

Little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I'm not in printing either--but I am in publishing. Nothing disingenuous about it. Printers have schedules just like brewers. There are inks, paper, inlays to purchase, computers and software in modern printing must be compatible--we've had products delayed for months because of software glitches. Publishers used to store plates for a limited time, which is why books went out of print--making new plates is not a cheap process and is generally avoided. Unlike fiction, most nonfiction and trade titles need to be updated periodically. That costs money and sometimes it's easier to just let a title to slide into the dust heap than to update it.

Sorry to go all geeky on this, but I just can't let your claim stand. Stick to claims about beer.

 

Haha and you should probably stick to publishing, because the factors limiting beer production, especially ones requiring limited resources, such as hops that run out, barrels that aren't made in greater quantity are different. Books could be published in any quantities, but aren't due to expected demand, not because of any of the ingredients. If a publisher thought he could sell 50,000,000 copies of a book he would plan his printing run to print that many books. Plenty of paper, ink, and power to run the machines to do it, and of course the product itself, the book's contents, are already completely composed. If a brewer thinks he can sell 50,000,000 gallons of barrel aged Stout with Pacific Jade hops, he would be logistically and physically incapable of doing it. This can be expressed in many other ways that prove the same point for more average beers, but this example hits the proper bases. That is the difference you avoid meeting in your rebuttal.

 

This thread's too long to read through @ this point so I don't know if this point was already made. Probably was, as it seems pretty obvious to me. But skimming through the posts it appears to me that roughly 90% of people responding are in favor of this kind of system. Now I'm no mathemetician, but if 90% of people would sign up for a program that guarantees them access to beers that are currently available to only, say, 50% of people who want them (or maybe even less)... well you see where I'm going with this. Paying $35, or $50, or $100 to become a "VIP" won't add a single bottle of beer to a store's inventory. So pretty quickly you're going to run into the same problem places have now: demand outstrips supply. Only now you have a bunch of people who actually are entitled to this beer, because they paid extra to have it held for them. And when the store can't deliver on its promise, well, hell hath no fury like a beer geek scorned.

People either need to decide to chill out about all these crazy beers, or breweries need to increase production, or a little of both. Everything else is just a band-aid for this supply/demand dilemma.

 

I'll reserve judgment on the "what happens when there are too many members?" problem until I actually see it happen.

As was discussed a bit earlier in the topic, at my local shop the beer club is much larger than the allotment for pretty much anything (50+ people at least - more like 100). So they did a lottery where all you needed to do was respond to an email over the course of several days to be entered in the drawing. Turns out very few people were entering. They probably just wanted the membership for the other perks.

Maybe it would work differently elsewhere. Even then, I'd rather battle it out with 50-100 other craft beer geeks for a bottle than all of them plus every unemployed-yet-still-well-off-enough-to-chase-dem-wales hoarder within driving distance.

 

You're getting so far off the reservation it's hilarious. Analogies aren't meant to be perfect and it was not my analogy to begin with. If you want to consider something similar, try Apple's production issues because of chipset shortages. The point is, beer is not unique. Next thread!

 

Agreed. We rec'd 2 cs. Frangelic Mountain Brown, 2 cs. Bolt Cutter, 1 cs. Doom and 3 cs Mango Magnifico. So, what should we have? 12 VVVIP's, 24 VVIP's and 36 VIP's?

 

Yeah. Only way I see this working long-term is some kind of sliding scale. The more you pay, the rarer the beers you're entitled to. But when beer starts looking like a country club, I'm no longer interested in participating.

 

You're no grammarian either, but I's venture to say that your count is off. Maybe half the posters (as opposed to the number of comments) think this is a good idea or would participate in such a program. The rest are split between opposition and noncommittal. Still, your point is valid. All this does is increase the cost of the Whales without doing anything to the supply. In fact, it's likely to make the supply problems worse. It's more interesting to see breweries doing this to their customers, effectively promising to limit production further by guaranteeing exclusivity to club members (HF and The Bruery already do this). This is already a problem with some limited-production top-rated wines that are going almost exclusively to collectors who end up paying exorbitant sums essentially to let those bottles just sit and be ruined, which means that the best vintages of the most highly respected winemakers are barely consumed at all and live essentially on reputation alone. Are we going to see Beer Auctions for collectors within a decade, selling "rare" bottles of completely stale and denatured beer?

 

I would view this as more of a problem if this particular club didn't essentially compensate for the $35 fee with benefits even before the special release access kicks in. $35 for nothing more than access to beers that will almost certainly come in quantities lower than the number of people who want them might be a bit much, but the way I see it, there's a difference between an access fee and a true "VIP" program. This bottle shop's program seems true to the latter more than the former.

You're right about one thing--the demand for special beers is cray, but that's sort of what I like about this program. It treats the special beers as special, but also discourages the hunting an encourages a retailer/consumer relationship. Demand isn't likely to subside anytime soon and supply isn't likely to significantly change other than incrementally, so we (retailers & consumers) have to do out best to work within it. This seems like a pretty clever way to do it to me.

 

Yes! I might be able to take a vacation after I sell my KtG Vert!

 

Ahem.
Actually I am a grammarian, but I save that effort for my day job. BA is where I kick up my heels and mix metaphors, dangle a few modifiers, even drop a serial comma from time to time.

 

Was kidding around, but actually wasn't talking about grammar, strictly speaking. That "I's" was a genuine typo--typing in the dark and hitting a neighboring key (s for d). But, if you insist, here's the referent.

 

If I get a special release in my store, I'll save a bottle or two for my regulars...no $35 VIP system required. I know their faces and they're in my store 2-3x a week buying the shelf stuff. I'm not about to penny pinch them.

 

Said the pot to the kettle

 

It's a bit of a running joke here in RI. Everyone always used to say that gas stations would never charge for air. Now it's $0.50 to turn the pump on. A ridiculous analogy to the conversation for sure, but I still think it shows how the things we assume will never cost money, in time, will.