2016 BCBS Chicago Release (Black Friday & Beyond)

Believe me on this...that's all I can say.

Ask yourself this question, if it wasn't ready, then why was it used in Prop ver 2.1?

 

People defending $50 bottle of Coffee as a good deal... What happened to beer.

 

BCBCS is basically controlling our lives and money. We are all beer zombies. How sad is that?!

 

But there isn't much Goose/AB can do because of the three-tier. I'm sure they love seeing people crazy for the beer, lined up and camping out overnight. That's great press, the same as when Apple has people lined up for the new iPhone.

If anyone is to blame, it's Goose Island and AB for not selling this beer to distributers for enough money to start with.

 

It became a luxury good.

At $50, I don't think it's a good deal. But I think it is pretty close to the correct price. Anytime a retailer has to place a restriction on the amount you can purchase, that's probably a good indicator the item is priced below actual market value.

 

Pretty close? What about $40? If so, then you think the experts at GI, AB, and InBev under value their product by nearly 70%? I don't know, that would seem not only to be bad business, but fairly improbable. BTW, since you brought up Apple, do you happen to remember when the iPhone came out 9 years ago? There wasn't much hysteria over it until Apple slashed the price.

 

You could probably get a few select people to pay that amount, the vast majority would simply move on to something else priced at sane levels. The last thing GI would want is one of their flagship beers sitting on shelves and being laughed at for insane pricing.

 

I had Regular and Prop 16 today at GI Clybourne. I thought prop was very Cocoa tasting with the pepper burn, no smokey flavor that I have read. I thought it was pretty good.

 

I think a factor which needs to be considered is that GI/ABI do not likely want to alienate craft beer consumers, especially the more casual ones who get caught up into the yearly Black Friday frenzy. And by casual fan I certainly exclude anyone who uses this site. I agree that BCBS could have a higher MSRP and still sell. GI produce a lot of BCBS and they distribute it all around the country. The GI Black Friday release has become a national event unto itself. If GI raises the MSRP of BCBS to something like $15, it's going to start pricing out a lot of people who have been part of the yearly Black Friday chase. Yeah, the beer will still sell at the higher price but again the casual beer fans will start to disappear and the Black Friday national event will loose a lot of its luster as a result.

Now the variants are a slightly different beast. Here too I think GI/ABI would like the casual fans to still be interested in seeking these out and to not say, "damn that shit's expensive" and them then only buying the regular due to the variant price. But I think we can all agree that if some store had BCBCS at $50 a bottle and there were 5 cases present, there are people who would not blink twice at throwing down 3 grand to scoop it all up.

There are sort of two sets of customers at opposite ends of the spectrum with respect to GI Black Friday - the casual beer fan who joins the BF frenzy and lines up to buy a few bottles and then the hardcore hoarder who will buy up any and all bottles which get in their way. For the former, imo GI/ABI does not want to price them out because the more people who take part in the BF chase, the more publicity GI gets, the more residual effect it might have on their brand possibly, etc. The latter customers just want all the BCBS & variants (particularly these of course) and they'll stop at nothing to get it all whether it's for accumulating trading currency, pretty instagram pictures or whatever. The retail price on variants which would even make this group pause would make the casual fan blush and I don't think GI/ABI wants to go there. Obviously Rare '15 pricing was up there and I think GI/ABI will possibly have more of these pricier one-off variants in future years but I don't think they'll go and up the price of the other yearly variants (namely coffee, prop) to that level for the reasons mentioned.

 

Take a look at secondary markets. Coffee is worth whatever people are willing to pay, it's much closer to $50 than MSRP.

Absolutely. I was there for the release of the original iPhone. Day 1. 48th in line at the flagship Chicago Apple Store. I spent about 9 hours waiting in line. It was a great experience, even talked to Phil Schiller. When you walked into the store the entire employee base cheered. Never been so happy to spend $600.

 

My point exactly. As long as a secondary market exists, this is going to be a problem.

 

What are you talking about, why not? All of their other beers sit on shelves. That is literally how retail beer stores work. I can walk into Bottles & Cans (my local shop) any day of the week and buy every other product GI makes.

Gillian, Halia and Madame Rose are ~$30/bottle. They aren't priced to sell out immediately. People aren't camping out or waiting in lines to buy them. But people do still buy them, enough that the store chooses to allocate space and keep them in stock.

 

One, you didn't answer the question and two, secondary has no relevance in this discussion. I'll take Prop Day as an example. GI was selling Rare for $80 all inclusive and people passed on it. In my group of four, only one Rare was purchased. I'd also say based on what I recently saw at Fulton St., that only about 60% of those at Prop Day purchased Rare. So, secondary on Rare has been running about $125, so why is it that folks passed on it? It's because folks were not very excited about paying more than MSRP and particularly since the distributor was cut out of the equation. The same thing happened earlier in the year when GI released vintage bottles at Fulton for onsite consumption. I forget what Vanilla Rye went for, but it was something like $125 per bottle. When folks complained, GI referenced secondary pricing. Let's just say they had a lot left over that day and that was for Vanilla Rye!

Your experience with Apple was not the one I remember. Sure there were lines at the Chicago and NYC stores, but otherwise it was mostly irrelevant (remember it was also only available on AT&T). When it got crazy and Apple was selling out in a matter of minutes was after they slashed the price by 1/3 IIRC. Again, take a look at the supply and demand chart.

 

This is not correct. Simply didn't make a lot of Coffee this year. Focus was on making sure yields of regular were high enough for distro nationwide.

 

I paid $7.99 at the Orland Costco. Coffee was $9.99. They had one case.

 

hey any one hear if whole foods is doing the week after release again or not? i haven't found anything

 

The iPhone thing isn't totally relevant though, as they can go even lower and take a loss on the product if they needed to, because they make money on the iPhone just by people having bought and using it.

 

I saw something in a facebook post. Ill dig around to find it.

 

Damm. I knew I should've taken my Dad up on the use of his membership. I drove right by the OP one. Didn't know if that would float without him present though.