Bourbon County 2017

Lined up to the east, first group was there by midnight. Only one tent and they started selling at 7 but let us in about 610.

 

I know Goose loves the publicity of the Black Friday event, but I can really see them moving to a pre-ticketed event with designated pick up times next year. They probably weren't interested in it because things always moved so smoothly, but after this year, forget it. Look at KBS, 4Elf, DLD (sort of). All pre-ticketed, and now more smooth than they've ever been.

 

I must have been right there with you guys. I was told on a preliminary count before the line moved that I was 920. Once we hit 9:00 I somehow had been pushed all the way back to 1400 and just left.

 

From your post you’re taking it better than I would. I’d send some version of this to their feedback email listed earlier.

Wait so he’s not a ninja? I refuse to believe this.

I’d dispute this to a certain extent. I was #884 and spent way longer in line than is reasonable. We were told we were around 570 originally, so we probably could have had an ok vintage option. If I’d have known how unprepared they were, I would have gone to Oakbrook at 4:20, apparently been 8th in line, picked up the non-LP full allotment and then spent a couple hours looking for more, and been home in time for lunch. I actually thought about calling an audible when I woke up and read the madness on here.

Binnys begged for this to be an attention grabbing news story and then were woefully unprepared for it. They commented on that blog post that
a) 7am is fine
b) their team moves fast
c) and a bunch of other things that show they weren’t ready for what they had brought down on that area of the city.

At the end of the day, we got all the beer that Binnys said from LP, so can’t complain anywhere within miles to the extent of the guys who stayed in line back at #1200. But I’m just responding to your comment to point out that I wouldn’t call myself or the folks around me a happy camper.

 

I was #518 and the vintage choices left were ‘16 reg and ‘16 bw.

 

Every Total Wine location in MN had 2-3 cases of Reserve. And many other stores had it yesterday as well, just not in those quantities.

Can't imagine how much of it was made, has to be hundreds of PALLETS of it.....

 

to me, the payoff for going to LP just doesn't seem to be there considering the disaster it sounds like it is. is the main draw just possibly getting something from 3-4 years ago? becuase it sounds like the 3 hrs i spent sitting outside a malloy's netted me the same thing people got after sitting at lincoln park for 9 hours.

 

Just commenting here to say, good write-up. Spot on, based on my own experience and everything I've read.

 

About 75 people here by my rough estimate.

 

I was the empty store front. Hid in plain sight.

 

Damn. You're better than I thought.

 

Thanks. I went back and forth about whether it was worth mine, and other people's time.

 

I agree with the folks who say jack up the price of the variants. They are way too low. Considering Rare sat on shelves last year at $70 for a few weeks, that is probably the right way to go for things like Prop, Reserve, and Rye....You want one, it'll be sitting on the shelf. You want 5- better talk that over with the wife first....

 

It seemed to me that Prop was an artificial shortage yesterday. Goose originally said it would be on tap at fulton, it wasn't. Several Jewels that where listed to get it didn't. Walgreens in Bucktown didn't get any and northwoods showed up at the very last minute. So where is all the prop?

 

After reading a bunch of the posts, I think it’s important for people to “check the boxes” in order to provide good firsthand feedback to Binny’s LP specifically. I’d say getting a full allocation maybe didn’t meet initial expectations but was successful in a couple boxes. I wasn’t there - went to Suburban Binny’s and Jewel - but it sounds like these were the things they didn’t deliver on or that were significantly worse than past years.

1. POS time: I think this is actually an issue at LP and at least the suburb Binny’s I went to. The check out time is too long, and there are many ways to improve. Why don’t you have SKUs set for full allotment and full allotment minus glass? Why not a lottery or just tell everyone in the blog that they are obligated to full allotment? The other good thing about this is you know exactly how many customers you can serve.
2. Pricing: I think not enough is being said about this. The pricing was a full 20% higher than Jewel. That being said, I don’t have a problem with the price, but wish it was communicated earlier...bringing up the next issue.
3. Communication: Not telling people they were 1000+ in the line at 6:00 is not on them. When you go into this given how they have it set up, this shouldn’t be an expectation. Not counting the line periodically and not giving that info 8:00 and after when they’d know the line is +1300 is a joke. Not telling people after 1000 when they get there that the allotment will change is a joke. Changing the plan with where Reserve is being distributed to when the change is made (and it was made at least a week ago) is a joke. Why not tell the price earlier? Even say “a full allotment will be about $225”?
4. Process following Plan: I completely understand the plan. Tell people more available allocations at LP, tell them higher quantity of some variants at LP, give them guidelines for times and what’s allowed/not allowed. But to not police it and guide it given how the craft beer community is evolving is ridiculous. Again, they have options. Spend money and buy corrals, hire temp security, lottery process, hand out tickets as people line up, etc. They (GI and Binny’s) both likely want the hype but they’re losing customer service at the risk of having it affect their business the other 364 days of the year. I get that even bad publicity is good marketing but there’s a tipping point.

To be clear, other stores do the same things - they basically say “we have very limited quantities” when they could say “we have 2 cases of Prop and 2 cases of Reserve with an allocation of one variant bottle per person”. I get that a lottery may seem to allow hoarding. And benefits programs are a pain to manage. But, the communication, transparency and policing of the plan can be improved significantly to then make the experience more beneficial to the consumer. I don’t propose to have answers but they’ve asked for feedback and hope they at least share what they got and how they’re going to change.

For transparency, my wife and I went to Plainfield Binny’s for 4th straight year, got there @5:15 and got full allocations. It’s my main beer buying option. I thought about LP because of the higher allocations, but kept monitoring social media and was not up for getting up @ 2 AM. I had thought about a 7 AM arrival, but was worried about the quantities of Reserve. Both seemed to have been on the mark as people that arrived at 7 AM didn’t get full allotment and Reserve was the first to go. I enjoy meeting people in line, don’t drink in line to respect the business owner and prepare to sit in the cold because I like the beer. That being said, this puts the process in my hands in many ways that a lottery wouldn’t.

 

Hopefully they are waiting for the out of towners to leave before dropping it...

 

Yeah, I'm trying not to just pile on here and be somewhat constructive. I hate to say it, but it's been a while since anyone has...it is just beer. Albeit REALLY damn good beer. I totally could've called an audible, and gotten the variants I so desperately wanted. But spending time with my friend was more important to me and didn't want to back out on him last minute. I went for the big play and it totally blew up in my face. I'm an adult and I made that call. I'll have a different game plan next year for sure.

It's gonna work out okay for me because of some very generous friends and Ba's that did really good yesterday. And I'm thankful for that. Hopefully one day I can return that favor. Beer karma. It's real deal. Seen it before. I'll see it again.

The one thing I'm salty about is I'm still going to be out Prop, along with my whole crew. I was the one shot we had. So now I hit the trade boards. Again. Which right now, is pretty absurd if you haven't looked. So I'll have to wait for the hype to drop a bit. The amount of people not from IL trying to trade their Prop (and not from IL or KY) trading Reserve is crazy right now. There were a lot of out of state plates at LP though, so I guess I'm not too surprised.

 

Champaign Sam's Club has a stack of Regular. Generous allocation of 1 bottle per member at $9.96 each. No line.

I literally laughed out loud when I walked in and it was the first thing I saw. To be clear, I generally dislike that place. It's more my wife's jam.

 

Why the hell would anybody say “raise the price”? Why would you want to pay more for your beer, makes no sense. Say “run a better release”, “make it ticketed and timed”, “make more of it”, anything but raise the price. Shouldn’t the problems be on them to fix, not us to pay more.

 

Hi all - This is Doug, one of the beer buyers at Binny's. I was at the event yesterday. I heard a lot of your feedback then, and we're still listening. We're reading this thread, but your best way to be heard is to email [email protected]. Your feedback is helpful as we work to make this event better every year. Some issues we're looking at include problems with the line, communication the day of the event and the checkout process.

By the way, if you purchased Northwoods in the Lincoln Park Tasting Room (not LP's front registers or any other store) you were incorrectly charged extra tax. Refunds are coming - check out more on the Blog: https://www.binnys.com/blog/bcbs-release-extra-tax-charged-lp-binnys/

We promise that we are going to take all of your opinions and advice seriously and make appropriate changes. We want this to be the best beer event of the year and we are 100% committed to learning from any mistakes and get better every year. Thank you.