Are these gimmicks that some Craft Beer Shops doing legal?

If I'm not mistaken, Ferrari does it with one of their makes if you already own 2 or 3 other Ferrari. Never mind if you have the money for it, you have to be committed to the brand in order to purchase. This is the only equivalent that comes to mind (if true).

Note: this isn't a food/beverage as you requested, but it's the only example I can think of.

 

Its legal.

 

Laws vary from state to state, but I don't believe posting store info on social media and making people have a password to receive a product is any more illegal than giving out golden tickets to purchase a product, as long as a fee isn't charged for either. However, making you buy other products in order to get a certain product, if not illegal, is certainly underhanded, similar to when distributors make a store buy cases of beer that doesn't move in order to get a small amount of a whale beer. If this isn't your regular store, avoid it.

I know you don't want to mention the name of the store, can you at least mention the name of the city or county?

 

I say good for them! I'd make then spend at least $100 in store and do a headstand for at least 30 seconds for the chance to purchase the rare beer.

Then again, I think rare beer is kind of stupid, so I kind of like seeing people jump through hoops for it. It entertains me.

 

I don't mind joining on a social network to get a beer but being forced to purchase beers in order to get a rarer beer, no thanks!

 

I have no idea about legality.

But for the first example, I don't really see the big deal. I don't think you're giving up a major slice of privacy, and I don't think the store / snapchat are colluding in any way to bolster the snapchat userbase. Seems like a decent way to whittle down the potential number of buyers of a beer where I assume demand heavily outweighs supply.

Regarding the second example (buying other beers from the same brewery) - I'm not in love with this tactic, and I don't see the necessity for something like an in-state DIPA. But there are worse ways of selling limited releases. Also I don't see the social networking angle in this example.

Re: the use of social media in general. I get why stores use it. I think it makes sense. And where do you draw the line? Is it a problem giving your email address if the store likes to communicate limited releases / new beers via an email distro?

 

That "forced" to buy those extra beers seems rather sketchy to me and sounds like a place I wouldn't want to deal with.

However, I do frequent a local bottle shop and am part of their "mug club" and we do get advanced notices about special selections coming in and even to hold one for us if we so choose. But they do make the beers available to the public after we all have a chance to call dibs. May not seem fair to outsiders or those not in the club but we tend to be the most frequent and loyal customers and there always seems to be extras left over for everyone to buy.

 

This is done all the time with wines. Quite frankly I wish it was done more with beer. I wish stores were allocating based on lifetime and recent purchases, as opposed to giving it to the truck chasers while I'm at work.

 

This part is tricky...I know in Virginia, for a distributor to say if you want to get X-rare beer, you have to buy others from their portfolio, it is illegal, but a common practice. I'm not sure how that translates to retail...but they should tread carefully to make sure they are within the law so they don't lose their license.

 

The only one that may be against the law is forcing people to buy other beers when they buy the rare beer. Most states have laws against this. The other ones are annoying but legal.

Don't forget that we are the cause of most of this behavior.

 

Regardless of legality, which it seems legal, that would be really annoying.

One of my favorite shops posts the new and in stock items as they are shelved, which I appreciate, but they don't limit sales or have code words or the like.

 

It's not food/beverage as OP noted, but I worked at a sports card/memorabilia store for 4 years in college. Whenever a 'hot' product came out (think 1999 SP Authentic Football for any card collectors), we would get calls from all over and people that we had never seen before coming in to buy the hot cards only and nothing else. It was annoying and took product away from our regulars that bought all the garbage cards we had to sell to get our allocation of the good product from the manufacturer.

That business owner ultimately chose to hold certain product off the shelf for our regular customers only. And I was fine with that because those were the customers who shopped their year-around and the ones that needed to be kept happy long-term.

 

I have no problem with retailers showing preference to regulars over truck chasers. People stay in business by attracting loyal customers and keeping them. Some of the other gimmicks are irritating but may be necessary. I don't mind having to buy another beer if I want a rare beer but I would get irritated it someone specified what beer I had to buy. Regarding social media and all that rot I would be pretty irritated if someone called my cell phone during a business meeting to inform me that a particular rare beer had arrived.

 

To the issue of "forcing" customers to purchase one beer to get another, there was a pretty exhaustive thread on the practice just a few weeks ago:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/communi...beer-in-order-to-purchase-a-rare-beer.252708/

In my opinion, there are ways to do it well and ways to do it in a more "sketchy" manner. If your "forced" purchase is something broad that gives the consumer plenty of choice, or even a kind of loyalty program, where you have to have purchase X amount of beer in the last X time period, then it's all good. The only time it seems troublesome to me is when they use the tandem purchase to move old or unpopular product from the shelves. The key is in requiring a purchase that the consumer might make on their own anyway, rather than requiring them to buy something they wouldn't buy in a million years.

I see no problems whatsoever with the snapchat bit. Really it strikes me as no different than the use of email lists or social media. It's odd to even frame it as a problem, because I would jump at any chance to get limited beers that I wanted with such a small level of effort on my part.

 

I'm no legality expert, but I don't see either scenario breaking any laws.

 

I think the social media usage is a pretty good idea for the store. It gives them a "mailing list" for people who want to know about new releases. By requiring a password also cuts down on the truck chasers, so I don't see a problem with it.

As for the "you must buy x beer in order to get the rare y beer", I understand why they might enforce such a policy, but I do not necessarily agree with it. Keep in mind that distributors often give preference of special releases to the stores that do the most volume. A store that makes you buy certain kind of beer from the same brewery when you buy a special release is probably just keeping sure the numbers stay up.

 

I follow some craft beer stores on Facebook, but I was already on the site before I started following them. If these particular places engage in such activities I'm not aware of it. I've gotten some goodies stashed in the back before just by simply asking, but I've never had to flash my decoder ring...

Making someone buy beer A B C and D before you can purchase beer E is probably not illegal, but it's a bunch of baloney. These are the reasons I choose not to chase whalez, bro...

 

I would absolutely hate a policy of needing to buy A and B to get C, but at my regular shops I do it voluntarily because I know how the game is played and I know it helps them out. The big differences are that I get to choose what and when I make those "lesser" purchases, and that it's not forced on me.

I wouldn't love having to use SnapChat (or even Facebook) because I don't already use those, but if you want to email me or use Instagram (which I do use) then it doesn't bother me at all; can't please everyone so I'd have to decide if the shop was important enough if they wanted me to use a particular social media app that I wasn't already using.

As to legality, @jesskidden?

 

If there was a liquor store advertising on snapchat and making customers go on snapchat to get deals I would never set foot in that store again. Is the owner in high school or something? I can see having a page on Facebook to advertise specials etc, but really snapchat?