It pays to shop around

You asked a small bottle shop to price match with Target? That's kind of a dick move...

Smaller stores need a higher margin to make up for the lack of volume. They make up for their higher prices with good selection and knowledgable, personal service.

 

I think the trend is that people buy the "macro craft" like Sierra Nevada at grocery stores, Target, etc. that tend to have lower prices, move more volume, and often fresher beer. That's been my experiences here. I go to the big beer/wine places only for the less common stuff that grocery stores don't carry, though that list is getting smaller since my Safeway has 2-Hearted, Union Jack, Racer 5, Stone IPA, Odell IPA, and a few others.

The smaller owned places are ones I rarely buy from because I've had the most problems with them in terms of freshness of non-rare beers - things like Sculpin or AleSmith for example. They also have the highest prices, sometimes by enormous % increases over the big box stores. Setting aside the whole "buy local" debate issue, I'm just not going to pay low $20's for a Firestone Walker special release when it is $15 at BevMo, for example. Much of the time the savings aren't in cents, they're usually in dollars and often easily 20%+ more at the small local stores.

 

To the best of my recollection, this is the first time I have seen the terminology of "macro craft". I wonder if this should be trademarked!?!

Cheers!

 

The OP didn't ask the small bottle shop to match Target's price, he was only commenting on the price difference in this forum, not in the store. The OP saids he asks the larger stores for discounts on older beer.

The main reason Target's price is less [and they can buy it wholesale for less] is probably because they move a lot more SNPA than a small specialty shop.

 

I read this the same way. There is NO way you can expect your average beer store to come close on price. You said that they do not know what the market is...when they know exactly what Target and Walmart do...they just cannot try and compete with them or they will lose money. Walmart and Target ARE NOT market!! Buy from them all you want, if you want, but I will not. Pretty soon they will be selling you cheap chinese craft beer for really cheap...

The difference between the dating of the product happens all the time from store to store. At some point, someone is going to be buying the next 'new batch' from the distributor and have the newer product. The only dating you have pointed out for 'older beer' has been the SNPA. The problem may be that you think a two month old Pale is is somehow not good enough??? Just how much do you think these guys are making on beer that they discount it so often? That $1 a sixer that they offered you off the regular price is pretty close to their margin, depending on the beer it is....so close to cost for their product.

 

I read that as you asking a beer store for a discount because the beer was cheaper at Target. If you did not do that, my apologies for misunderstanding.

 

I guess it depends on who is running the shop. I was in the largest liquor store in town awhile back and saw that they had single bottles of Traquair House Ale marked down from $5 a bottle to $2 a bottle. I don't know how old the bottles were, but they had dust on them. I assume they were marked down because they weren't selling. I bought a few and found that they were aged perfectly. They were delicious.
I was in a very small store once looking for BCBCS. The owner of the store told me that they were all out, but they had just gotten some King Henry. Since this was about a year after King Henry was released, the owner calculated the usual markup above what the store recently paid for it and they put a price tag on it for me. It was $13.

 

Well said

 

This shall go down in history as the most politely handled misunderstanding in online message board history.

 

Mass retailers sell items cheaper than mom and pop shops?

The hell you say.

 

Aside from SN, BBC/Sam Adams, Deschutes, New Belgium and Harpoon, what else would qualify as "macro craft"? Is it worth a separate thread?

 

Well run stores absolutely can compete with big box stores on the "macro craft" style beers. They just need to either do good volume, or make up that money elsewhere. I regularly buy craft 12 packs from stores with strong craft inventory for $13-$14. In fact, $13.99 is about "par" for a SNPA 12-pack once you get outside of the overpriced stores and high-rent locations. So I don't think Target is underpricing there at all.

And to flip it around, who's to say that those craft stores aren't charging you the $16-$18 for a SN 12-pack simply because they can get you to pay it? Just because a craft beer store is friendly, it doesn't mean they are looking out for your best interests and pricing as low as they can go.

 

Magic Hat, Long Trail, Smuttynose, Brooklyn, etc, etc. I've heard the term used before to generally mean breweries that sell sub-$15 12-packs and are popular with the non-beer geek crowd.

 

Generally I agree with what yemenmocha says. If I'm looking to save a few bucks I'll buy the more mainstream beer wherever it's priced best, as long as I don't have to drive out of my way and it's relatively fresh. For the limited release stuff, depending on what it is and how hard to get, I'll buy it at the smaller stores that specialize (or wherever I find it first), even if the price is marginally higher.

What's a bit of an anomaly for me in this regard is that my new neighborhood bottle shop, since I moved to a new area of town, has better prices even than Whole Foods (which basically sets "benchmark" prices as far as I'm concerned) on the limited releases they get. I think I picked up a few bottles of Parabola there for about $13.49; pretty sure everywhere else it was priced @ $14.99. They don't always have the best selection but it's basically become my first stop when looking for something, both because they're only a few blocks from my house and because I'm fairly certain that on average, their prices are as low as they come.