How to Properly Address Outrageous Overpricing

As a shop owner, I would hope the customer would bring it up to me. Speaking for myself, I have made pricing mistakes before.

 

this shit is way tl;dr, but food for thought for you armchair economists:

i can sell HotShot beer $20/bottle, and sell thousands of them. i can also leverage that brand to sell others

does it follow from that that i can

1) sell thousands of hot shot beer at $50?

2) leverage that brand at $50/bottle to sell others?

----

a lot of you, i suspect, if you want to understand this stuff, need to think about what bottles make breweries money. is it the $50 "world class" 1-off that they will never in their wildest optimism dreams sell (or even produce) 100,000+ bottles of? or is the flagship pale ale they can't keep on shelves?

if world class 1-off is leveraging beer geeks to drive the reputation and demand up, how many beer geeks do you need? is that number greater than, equal to, or less than the amount that will buy a $50 bottle of your beer?

these are relevant questions. "will some asshole on the internet pay $60 when i usually charge $30?" is not relevant at all, unless you're just some smallminded shop owner interested in getting some strip club cash or something.

 

Exactly right. Voting with your wallet gets the attention of my bottle shop owner.

 

I bought a case down the street for under $40. 'Nuff said.

 

I tried that yesterday at the place with the $3.99/bottle Zombie Dust. Asked if it's still $4/bottle, since the price isn't posted, the beer guy confirmed the price. I just made a face and shook my head. Figured that's a way to "vote with my wallet." Not a minute later, I see a guy walk up and buy two six packs of it. Ha. And there's no price break for buying a sixer. I should have stolen that guy's wallet.

 

What are you going to do with that? Either that guy didn't know or didn't care he was getting ripped off. It makes it tought though because it justifies the owners pricing, the best you/me/us can do is walk away.

 

That's exactly what I did. Just thought it was a comical that someone bought 12 so shortly after I made an attempt to voice my opinion about them being overpriced.

 

12x4= ridiculous

 

TRUTH! I have a grocery store that has a great bottle selection 30 min south from my house. I have the house of 1000 beers 45 min east of my house. I called the Store on Monday and asked about 4 beers they had 2. The beer manager said "well we are a lot cheaper than the House" When I said I'll just go to the house. I get samples, suggestions, hugs, freebies, someone to walk my beer to my car at the House AND All 4 beers! You get what you pay for.

If that store is the only place with it they can charge what they want.

 

Yes this is illeagal all beer has to go through the wholesaler system with the approval of the plcb. That doesn't stop some people however. The owner of one of the wholesalers that sell to the public as well made a special trip to ny to purchase 5 cases of pumking directly from southern tier. They could not get any more from the wholesaler and yes they did set the price very high. Btw where did you find heady around here

 

Tattle Tale!

 

You sound incredibly passive-aggressive. If you think making a mushy-face is going to get anyone's attention, much less get anything changed, you're fooling yourself. That was not voicing your opinion nor voting with your wallet in any sort of way. They probably thought you just had a bug in your eye.
Way to stand straight up for principles there Martin Luther.

Are you worried about your soul? Shut the hell up about exactly what, who, and where these types of things are going on and maybe one day you'll find a nice little sumpin sumpin where you never dreamed it would be despite your duality (gnashing on 'some people' for their 'illeagal' sales, but then inquiring where you might just find the same??). Let bootleggers be. They're not hurting you.

 

Double Dose IIPA is a limited production collaboration between Otter Creek (Woliver's) & Lawson's Finest Liquids. I purchased a 4 pack from Sean Lawson at the September 2013 farmers market for $15 including tax, and from my local shop for $15 + tax (I balked at another shop that wanted $4.50/bottle who had 2 singles left).

As another BA member posted, the brewers don't make a thin dime off the excess markup, and the Lawson's name itself has clout, which is why the price of the 12 oz. bottle has been inflated. I understand beer enthusiasts wanting to get in on the lore of Lawson's as their distribution is minimal and exclusive, and for this reason some retailers have a single chance to capitalize on the reputation of Sean Lawson (keeping in mind this is a collaboration) coupled with the fact that it has scored a 98 rating on BA.

You, the consumer, make the choice whether it is worth taking the plunge or not. The 98 BA rating is enough to sway many curious enthusiasts to try Double Dose at least one time, and some retailers are going to try to capitalize on that fact. I can assure you that Double Dose was not designed to be a $40/4 pack, and the brewers of this fine product would wince at that markup.

 

$90/case in VT,$40? Tell me another one.

 

Yes didn't you know that we love beer, and brewers love beer, therefore we are all friends and the brewers should price their product so even the poorest of beer advocates can afford to drink a 12 pack a week.

 

And perusing a handful of your posts, you seem like an incredibly angry individual. Go have a beer and stop being a keyboard asshole.

 

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't not buying said product EXACTLY what voting with your wallet means?

 

Making a face and shaking his head is not the same as voting with his wallet.
Walking out without said item could be considered a statement of some sort, but only if he actually told Owner he was doing that. I'm just saying that his little 'protest' above seemed designed to allow him to go home feeling like he'd made a stand against something without ever having to risk an actual confrontation of any sort. That's passive aggressive.

 

Maybe next time I will show him my wallet, and proudly proclaim "You, sir, shall not receive any of these jewels in exchange for your $4 Zombie Dust. I doth protest." Or would a hunger strike be better suited? Should I start a rally outside the store? Read the second paragraph you quoted. Whatever i would have done would mean shit, considering someone bought 12 of them not a minute later.

 

This is just too funny. Next time I'm at the grocery store, I'm going to tell the checkout clerk "By the way, I did NOT buy the Doritos this time. They weren't 2 for $5 like last time. This is ME, voting with MY WALLET."