Are Breweries Over Charging or Not?

I dont consider that over priced, but not worth the price. That will vary person by person. As long as have enough people that feel it is worth the price, it is not overpriced.

 

Charging "what the market will bear" is not over charging. A $40.00 bottle is expensive but if it sells out asap it's underpriced not over priced.

 

Agreed. I was just highlighting that I think OPs original statement touches upon both macro-economics (pricing based on supply/demand) and as well as an individual's perception and each of our unique concepts of value. A good topic and obviously woke up the BA contingent of finance majors.

 

So its either 4$/16oz or 5$/12oz

Im not a big $/oz arguer here, but I don't see where a 16oz can for 4$ is less value than a 12oz glass for 5$?

 

You should've called me Biff Tannen, I might have taken it as more of an insult.

 

The market price will continue to rise untill breweries no longer sell out in a matter of hourse(sometimes alot less). Take BASS for example, $30 is an expensive bottle of beer and it sold out in less the a minute. As much as I hate to say it pricies will continue to rise for the forseable future.

 

Change the subject and it becomes how absurd this argument is. I'd love a fucking Ferrari, but I'm not going on car website and bitching about how they charge too much and are pricing me out of the market. the fact of the matter is that 90% (give or take) of the beer in your local store is probably under $10 per bottle or can. Yes, that 10% may be too much for your wallet, but that shouldn't make you feel alienated because there's still a shit load of world class beer in your price range.

 

The While Label Releases are $20 usually and the black label releases(usually fruited) are 30. The 375's are 15 or 20 in my experience in my experience. Derivation was a silet release to very few people so I think that one can be removed from the conversation.

Cheers.

 

This is a topic I obviously enjoy talking about. I am a economics enthusiast.

 

Lets keep Pound Sign nation out too. Actually, the "Nation" thing is pretty tiresome at this point.

More to the OP, I've set a rough limit of $1/oz for retail packaged beer. That's roughly $25/750. And that has to bee a pretty special beer, or one that is a sort of "personal walezbro" for me. I'm a hell of a lot more likely to buy at $15ish/22-750.

 

You're changing my argument. I'm not arguing any of things you said.

I wasn't arguing that I felt alienated from the entire beer scene. I specifically said I felt alienated from the high-end beer scene. My entire point was that one of things that originally drew me to craft beer was the inclusiveness of it, that I felt I could participate in trying the high-end stuff as well as the great stuff in my everyday price range. Now, I increasingly can't, and that sucks. That's all. I'm not ignorant to the fact that there are many great beers in my price range. In fact, I specifically mentioned that I'm very happy drinking beers in my price range.

I also wasn't "bitching about how they charge too much." I specifically said that I harbor no resentment toward breweries and am not arguing that they "should" charge less. I was just explaining how rising prices are affecting me as a consumer and a participant in craft beer culture. I should be allowed to do that without being accused of bitching about prices.

 

I voted 'Other' because I don't think you can make either of the other options as a blanket statement about breweries, although there is an element of truth in both of the other statements in the poll. If a brewery has a rock star hit for one or several of their beers, yeah, I think there is an element of overcharging for these beers by most breweries. But I don't think anyone is rolling in the dough. Without any empirical evidence to back this statement, it seems like many of the breweries that have these highly-regarded beers are small breweries with limited production capability, thus there is no obscene amount of income. And if these breweries' owners are good business people, they'll use this extra cash to try to maximize their future profits by sinking that money into expansion and greater production of these hit beers so that eventually they can be rolling in the dough. At least this is what I'd be trying to do.

 

Some, yes. Some, no.

 

Actually it is me who should be apologizing. I read "homer" as Homer Simpson. God I am dumb sometimes.

I guess my non-economical look at the subject as a whole would actually be a lesson in sales I learned a long time ago.

How much would you pay for a shirt? How about a good meal? Now how much would you be willing to pay for front row seats at a baseball game? I could go on, but I think the point being that different people are willing to pay a different amounts for similar things. The different beer companies have filled the market with an abundance of price points. We, as consumers, all have our set limits, as seen by the responses so far.

My personal opinion on the subject, is that besides the Utopias series, there isn't a price point on a beer that I've said, "Oh hell no!"(which is pretty funny the more you think about it, because it comes from Sam Adams, a brewery that has very good price points imo), On that same thought, there has been plenty of beer that I've passed on for less expensive options.

 

@gibgink You should have prefaced your post with "Doh!"

 

That's what mis-reading my post will get you. I was agreeing that you would pay more than $4 at a bar, and adding to that the smaller serving size, which increases the value imbalance. Twas not a contradiction.

 

Businesses charge what they can, breweries included. So long as the market is free that is fair.

There are so many craft brewers that they could not conceivably collude to fix prices. Only a BMC cartel could hope to exert that kind of market control.

I'm not willing to pay market rates for some products, beer included. That's my choice but that is not to say they are overcharging.

 

Quibbles:
The analysis of the supply and demand for a particular product is microeconomics. Macroeconomics is the analysis of growth, unemployment, inflation etc in a national economy. Microeconomics can address the decisions by an individual, by a firm, or across an entire industry or market. They are all called micro, though micro has different subfields.

And the subject is economics, not finance, which is the analysis of markets for funds, not products, generally. Analysis of the value of a company is considered part of finance, and that of course is impacted by the markets for what the company sells. Also the cost of capital is one cost the company must consider in determining if a given price is profitable .