New Glarus Bottle Shop

Or they could go CW and just have a 6-pack of Scream that costs more. They should be able to swing it at around $12 if they brew big enough batches of it.

 

I fully expect a $0.50 or $1.00 on their six packs any day now. It's been a while.

 

See my post above. CW already has different six pack carriers for each of their beers, so having different SKUs/pricing is not a big step.

 

Def varies from shop to shop, so I'm not sure if they'd all pass on the increase to customers. I can get the same 6 pack of Moon Man for $7, $7.99, $8.49 or $8.99 depending on where I shop. $7 is on sale, $7.49 is that shop's regular price. They'd have to make the call- pass on the .50 to the customer or eat the profit loss.

 

Ah, missed that. From a retail persepective, it no longer makes any sense to put them all under one sku. Today's POS systems are sophisticated (obviously) so it seems like NG would actually welcome the more accurate data they (and the distributors) would recieve with independent SKU's.

But, they are pretty old school...

 

The difference is CW puts all of their beers in their own packaging. All NG brews carry the same SKU. Go to Woodmans where the price for a NG 6er is under $7 AND if you buy 6 packs or more you get an extra 10% off. Same deal with the Thumbprints... all the same SKU - I can buy 3 Oud Bruins and 3 Screams and get the 10% off. NG basically has 3 prices. 6 pack, 4 pack, bomber. The cash registers at the shop you buy won't typically say "Moon Man" or "Scream" they'll just say New Glarus 6 pack or whatever for the Thumbprints. It's a great way to keep logistics very simple they just gotta make sure all the beer they produce fits into the pricing structure accordingly.

 

I would have thought it was more of a cost saving item for NG.

 

I wonder how tricky it gets though if a particular shop did have a run on Totally Naked for example and needed 5 more cases... could they actually order 5 cases of Totally Naked or does a shop just order "New Glarus" and take whatever comes?

 

I suppose it would save them pennies on the printing, and a bit more than that on the time/storage aspect of the packaging. But I think it would allow them to do things like track specific batches, see real-time sales on specific styles (eliminating the human error involved in a 1-SKU system), and eliminate a few steps during their accounting process. Heck, we use independent skus for postcards at my shop, lets us see which ones sell the best.

For me, it'd be worth it just to see the real-time sales of a beer like Scream- how many of this batch are left on the shelves? Should we brew another one? I can't imagine how confusing tracking sales on TP beers can get when you've got 3-4 styles out there at the same time.

 

That would explain why so many of them don't know what TP is coming next, or when they are going to get it.

I would suspect that they can request specific styles from the distributor, but that all depends on how sophisticated the distributor is at tracking what styles they have. So the fruit beers must be a single sku as well?

 

There are also no SKUs on the cases of their beer... now that I think about it, distributing New Glarus is probably a huge headache. They must have to keep a manual record of all of their beer in and out... either that or just consider it all New Glarus and not care... still though without a code on the outside box they still have to do it manually.

 

I'm sure the distributors have a system. The cases used for FFF bombers don't vary as I recall. I'm sure there are other examples.

 

They probably each have their own system. Some are probably really good at it and others probably mix cases up in their systems all the time. All depends on how accurate they want to be.

The more control a brewery has over tracking what bottles go where, the better they'll be at making sure the beer is fresh and well-cared for. NG is all in-state, and many of their beers last a while, so that might not be a huge issue for them.

But if I were FFF, you'd better believe I'd want to know exactly where each case of , say, PF landed, how long it took to sell, etc. But then again, FFF can't even put their labels on straight.

 

Yeah. FFF is not a good example. Besides the fact that they give zero fuxx, they are small in the grand scheme of things.

 

Unless they came up with a way to code the cartons and cases as they bottle, it would require keeping an inventory of significantly greater quantity on hand. Right now, it's 1 4pack, 1 6pack, and 2 cases. Make them unique and you've got a metric crapton of cardboard to manage.

Dan and Deb are pretty savvy business people and I'm sure they've thought this thru before. I also remember them discussing how they keep everything at the same price specifically for the consumers and that the higher profits on Spotted make up for the low profits/marginal losses on other beers which may result from the single pricing scheme.