bcbs black Wednesday - NYC

with all the price confusion here, does anyone know what BCBCS went for in other markets?

 

BK was $7-8 per queens shops were $8-14 per

 

Read a few threads here and elsewhere that seem to indicate nothing but normal (~$24/4pk) prices everywhere but NYC, even other big cities. Seems like this year trading for it would be cheaper than buying

 

bummer

 

If we're talking straight BCS it's $24/4pk for everything at WF.

City Swiggers event was legit. Not crowded and I got 2 more VRs. Hoping they still have it on at Arts + Crafts

 

just an fyi but there were (3) 4packs of BCBS in the cooler at WF Chelsea and about 5 single bottles on the shelf/rack.

This was as of about 20 minutes ago.

 

Hey all, rarely post on here but I wanted to lend some clarification to the pricing issues this year (I'm a buyer for a bottle shop in NYC). This entire release was pretty sloppily done by AB, resulting in all the confusion we've seen in the past week. I can only speak to my shop's experience this year, but I wouldn't be surprised if these problems were widespread.

First off, after having explicitly asked my sales rep not to send the beer for Saturday (since I wouldn't be in town), the beer magically walked in the door Saturday at 2PM. After a thorough bitching, my AB rep swears he didn't place any order and that the head of their "craft" division just sent beers out without letting the sales team or the retailers know. So many retailers (myself included) may have been caught off guard by the delivery, and the subsequent truck chasers, which leads to the following pricing issue....

I'm sure everyone remembers the pricing shitshow last year with the GI Sisters, which was the result of a clerical error by AB. So when Goose Island prices look weird, there's precedence that an error may have been made.

This year Vanilla was significantly more expensive than Backyard last year, and Coffee was much (read nearly double) more expensive than last year despite it being the same bottle format. Now in hindsight, both of these prices are confirmed by AB and the brewery, however, the last thing I want to do as a retailer is put something on the shelf that looks "gouged". My AB rep confirmed the Vanilla price, but couldn't confirm whether or not the Coffee price was correct or not...he was waiting to hear back from that head of the "craft" division. Armed with this admittedly spotty information, I made the call to put out the Coffee line priced with the other bottles; it was Sunday, and the natives were restless!

24 hours later AB calls me back and confirms the much higher price for Coffee, after we've sold the case. Lovely timing, facepalm. Apparently it was something about incredibly expensive coffee beans.

Now I take full responsibility for selling the Coffee at the lower price and losing money for my store, I'm not trying to assign blame here...I had a 50/50 shot and made a call that didn't swing my way. I do know of other stores that don't look so closely at invoices when they come in, especially with limited release stuff like this, so it's more than likely that many retailers who were selling at $7ish don't even know what's happened yet.

All in all, Top Hops was not gouging, and anyone selling at $13 was not gouging, that's just really how expensive those coffee bottles were this year I'm doing what I can from my position to ensure that the AB "craft" division hears how terribly this was handled this year, and that they have to be more transparent with us (the retailers) for these limited releases in the future so nobody fucks over our customers (you guys!).

Needless to say, I had many a beer after this weekend.

 

Cool post. I think you are full of shit. Post a screen shot of your invoice. Unless you want me to just find prices of cases around the city, I'm only pushing b/c I nailed a case at cost this year so I know how much the bottles cost

Anyone talking nonsense about how $14 a bottle is a justified price is full of shit. Yourself included. How did GI manage to acquire beans that were actually 2x the money from the previous year and make that a sound business move? That's not how AB-InBev does business and that's not how a stable business works.

We were ***** on BCBCS this at Top Hops and others followed suit.

 

holy shit. relax and have a homebrew man

 

Sounds like someone chugged a 4 pack of BCBCS for lunch...

 

I wish I chugged a 4 pack of BCBCS for lunch......I wish I had a 4 pack of BCBCS actually for starters

 

Was $8 a bottle a few miles north of the city in Westchester. Just saying.

 

This is interesting. This is natural for the price difference between the NYC market and the rest of the country, however, everywhere else is the Coffee the same price as BCBS and BCBW? If that's the case then the rabbit hole just got a little deeper, and NYC may have gotten fucked with another unintentional (or intentional?) price error.

 

Just to confirm what you are saying, you think Top Hops intentionally charged double and then other NYC retailers saw what they did and, because there was no backlash (i.e., everyone bought it at twice the price, regardless), decided to do the same thing?

Do you have any idea as to their motivation behind that? Was it, as others have mentioned, just a way for TH to amortize the cost of having to buy a ton of other GI beers (that their regular clientele scoffs at) in order to get the event at their store? Or is it just an easy cash grab, knowing the rabid fans that the Coffee covariant has?

 

Yes it was under $10 a bottle everywhere else in the US. And even in Brooklyn and Queens (at least all shops I saw or heard of) the shops charged under $10 a bottle too unless it was 1 of the certified gouging shops. So if someone claimed it was because of the bean prices, they were most assuredly mistaken or possibly lying. There's no other way to explain it. I know NYC gets hosed on pricing...but it's usually buy $1-2. A nearly doubling of the price is inexplicable.

 

i dont think it makes sense to attack retailers who were merely doing their standard markup on an outrageous price charged by the distributor. regardless, someone got rich off of this, mistake or not.

 

this seems to be becoming very Rolling Stone

 

I paid the same exact price for 4 packs of BCBS, BCBBW and Coffee. $3 higher than last year, north of the city.

And although I really like the barleywine, it is annoying that coffee is much more difficult to get your hands on.

 

I can't speak for Top Hops but AB forcing retailers to take product that shops didn't want and that won't sell is very real. I was told firsthand (though I won't say by who) that this was going on specifically with this release and I'm not talking about stores having to buy regular BCBS.