Buying privilege. Come on, man.

Agreed. The store I used to work at had to buy (X) number of cases of Breakfast Stout to get 1 case of KBS. While Breakfast Stout is a great beer, it's kind of a lame practice but I understand why it's implemented in some cases.

 

Just in case nobody else points this out, this type of thing was going on long before ABInBev bought Goose Island.

 

Obviously they are not forcing anyone to buy unwanted beer, that's not the point. This is just crappy business, especially since the beer that has to be purchased to get the BCBS is old as hell.

In this instance, if the store has too much stock of a certain beer that it gets so old on their shelves, that is not the customers problem for them to push that beer like this. Laughable.

 

half these store owners could give a crap less about the beer, they just know what they have and want to hold you over a barrel for it, I say f@&k off, i'll go elsewhere.

 

And a crappy business should not get your business. Period. The problem is when there are very few outlets and they're all crappy.

 

On one hand i get it because distributors tie bcbs allocations based on sales of GI main line beers thus kinda forces the retailers hand.

On the other hand i get where people are coming from re shoddy sales practice. I ran into this with a summer release of bcbs during a goose island dinner. I voiced my displeasure with the staff over the fact not only did we pay for the tasting dinner they were forcing us to purchase GI 6 packs for 1 bottle of bcbs.

IMO it's not a move that will build regular clientele that come back.

 

Yes. In that case you have to decide to either suck it up with the least crappy of them or have a very tough time fulfilling your craft beer love.

 

Beer Hunting 201: These are the times when it pays to live in or near a large city.

 

I've literally never once seen it with a beer besides BCBS.

 

Not the store, the policy of distributors allocating hard to get beers from a particular brewery based on how much the retailer sells. It isn't something invented by ABInBev for GI and their distribution network. Happens with several craft breweries as well.

Edit: In fact this is the first time I've really seen an OP complaint about the "tied purchase" happening at the store level with GI's BCBS, but there's typically at least a few threads or complaints every year about this happening with other beers.

 

Even the local Red Hook, Elysian, Widmer, and 10 Barrel that are wholly, or partially, owned by Inbev?

 

a store in my area is only selling BCBCS as part of a 249 dollar package that includes two BCBS, one BCBBW, one BCBCS, and three six packs of Goose island's seasonal beers.

 

Of course they have the right to do it if they think it's good for business. (It probably is the more I think about it). No law is being broken. The question is simply will you do it or tell them to go to hell and find another shop.

 

Absurd pricing. What is name of store?

 

No bottle shop that implements a "qualifying purchase" policy gets my money and neither does any beer that requires such a purchase to access it.

 

small store by me does the same thing. provided that the beer i want is reasonably priced, frankly i'm going to buy a bomber or six pack at some point anyhow..but this particular store was not only making buy $10 worth of other items to be able to purchase Parabola...he jacked the price of parabola up to like $26 a bottle. that's just too much (and it had nothing to do with Firestone beers because I was buying Pipeworks bombers to get Parabola).

 

yeah, I stopped buying from this guy after a couple years...but my rationale was I work monday to friday and can't go sit at a Binny's (the large chicagoland retailer) for two hours at 10AM, so I have to pay a premium. The normal price is typically $17-20.

 

I think I get what you're saying but this type of thinking is what worries me. As long as people are willing to buy that extra beer they do not want, this will only become more and more common, and the 'rules' to buy will get worse and worse. Death by a thousand cuts.