Why don’t breweries charge secondary prices for whales?

In my line of work there’s an expression, “some shit sucks.” I think that people that flip these beers fall under that umbrella for breweries. The practice goes far outside just the beer community, and, just in my opinion, if a brewer charged 300 dollars for a beer that wasn’t aged for 75 years in barrels made from the cherry tree that George Washington chopped down that most people would see the brewery to have completely lost touch with reality and not buy it from them anyway. But that’s just my .02

 

Have you met Anchorage?

 

I'd stop supporting any brewery that did that, and that may be what keeps the brewery from doing it.

 

Side Project cut their format in half (750mL bottles replaced with 375mL bottles) and kept the price the same or more per bottle.

Not that it's completely charging secondary, but there is a very fine balance between picking up some of those profits left on the secondary market, and maintaining a relationship with the customers who have supported you all along.

 

On site bottles for Angry Chair and J Wakefield are regularly secondary prices. J Wakefield regularly does a "Cellar Sale" once a year where all the bottles are secondary prices to-go as well.

 

I don't know much about the secondary market. How many people are really paying $300/bottle versus how many bottles are produced? Is it 0.1% of production or 75%? I'm guessing at $300/bottle they would sell almost nothing.

 

Some people who get it for $30-40 may actually drink it.

 

The same question could be asked about sneakers, for example, which sell out at retail prices in seconds and then buyers have to pay a 2x or 3x markup to resellers. The price hits its true “value” at that point based on the item’s rarity and demand.

The brewery is just looking to sell all its beer at a reasonable profit—it doesn’t want bottles sitting around. The secondary market spreads the distribution of a given bottle from the immediate vicinity of the brewery to a nationwide or worldwide market, something I doubt most breweries are willing or able to do. The people who resell these beers at an enormous markup are contributing to the beer’s “rare” factor by taking bottles off the local market and spreading distribution to a much wider market. But unless breweries are willing to get into that game (most aren’t), their footprint is far more limited.

As others have suggested, I think breweries that got into this game would be frowned upon. $30 for a bottle of beer is a lot more than most people are willing to pay to begin with.

 

I laughed out loud. It do be that way.

 

I don't know much if anything about the secondary market, but more importantly I'm surprised no one on this site has used "Bob Beerdrinker" as their name.

 

I think most breweries see the disconnect between buyers and secondary resellers. It's not like it's a fond relationship. I think breweries would be smarter to find a way to track which of their members are reselling their allotments and ban them from membership.

 

Wait, you have to be a “member” of a brewery to buy its beer? I guess I’ve been doing it wrong.

 

if that happened whatever bottles they sold would end up $600+ secondary

 

I’m not sure about that. There’s only so many people willing and able to pay $X for a bottle of beer. Especially when most people realize that the difference between the most sought-after whales and lesser-known (but still outstanding) beers is negligible.

 

They wouldn't move them at the super high price point. I've noticed where breweries, like the Veil, sat on $30-40 stouts that didn't move.

Bob the Beer Drinker had some skin in the game either by waiting in a long line or investing these bottles with the hopes of selling them for higher. $4$ doesn't work with the hard to reach bottles.

 

There is a secondary market for beer? Who knew?

 

I agree with this.

The only way to find out is to pay to play though .

Point is if a brewery charged $300 for a beer , they'll still end up at secondary markets with a price point of 1.25x or more. People capitalize on FOMO.

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Edited cuz pointless**

 

Right, there will always be a markup but margins would be less. If enough breweries charged true “market price,” at a certain point the resale market would just die because people aren’t going to go to the trouble of acquiring these rare beers (or sneakers, or whatever) to resell them for a 10% profit. But breweries also would risk both (1) pissing off their customer base and (2) being left holding a lot of inventory. I doubt many breweries are interested in doing either.