Don't be a CraftHole

This. It doesn't piss any common customers off, but still gives the employees and their buddies the advantage.

 

Some stores care about trying to make new walk ins regular customers. It is this old fashioned idea that works for most businesses that try it.

When I walk into a new store and get an attitude because I ask for a limited beer as my first request, I can understand the sense of loyalty that leads to my being turned down. I even understand the frustration that must accompany a job that requires having to deal with walk ins, and how it might lead to this imaginary idea that I am some truck chaser who will never go back into the store.

I wonder if the truth of it, that if I get an attitude from you, Mr. Clerkhole, not only will I never set foot in your store again, but I will advise the 50+ fine beer lovers I know to do the same. If it is a really bad attitude, I will go out of my way to mention at every opportunity to every beer drinker I ever meet that you guys suck and don't shop there.

So, feel free to keep all the good stuff hidden, feel free to cop attitudes, and feel free to think how profitable it is for you to reward your regulars with the "good stuff", or keep them all for employees. I hope at one point you also realize that all 50+ of us, all of us potential better customers than your present best customers, will be shopping at your competition.

 

There is no easy way for a store to deal with limited releases when they want to hook up their regulars and/or employees. A lot of goodwill can be built with the presumed whale hunters in these instances. On the flipside, a lot of animosity can also be built with those same non-regulars. It's how the store's owner and employees handle the situation that will determine which path that potential customer takes.

It seems like there are a bunch of responses that fall on the animosity side, and that's a shame. If you don't want my business, there's no clearer way than to tell me you're saving a limited release for a regular or employee. Give me a path to be a regular in the future, and I may decide it's worth following that path. If you don't, I'm done with your store.

Also, I don't care if you're saving stuff for employees, whether because it's a perk or the employees are good customers. When a store tells me all they have is for employees, whether verbally or with that crazy employee box behind the counter thing earlier in the thread, I wonder whose interests the owner is trying to serve beyond his/her own. I can't just take a job at a store to get access to the illest beer releases. And regardless of how the employees get access to the beer (perk or spending their own money regularly), a store that tells me the employees get special treatment over customers loses my potential business, especially if it's a first-come, first-serve store. You should make sure I don't know. Ignorance is bliss in that situation.

It goes back to what I said earlier. Special releases seem to be more trouble than they're worth.

 

You seem way too angry to be working with the public

 

I've said many, many times that just because something is easy to find doesn't mean it is of any less quality. Is something like Dark Lord an awesome beer? Hell yes it is. Is Old Rasputin just as good? Another hell yes (And personally I prefer Old Raspy to any other RIS. Hell, I even named my black cat Rasputin**) If I have the chance to pick up some harder to find beer like KBS I definitely will, but I'm just as happy picking up beer that are just as good, if not better, or preferably, picking up beers I've never tried before.

**The name Rasputin is also fitting because my cat is an evil little prick

 

All I'm going to say if I have something I'm holding onto in the back is, 'We don't have it.' You'll never know it was there, you'll have no idea that you missed it. If it annoys you that I'm forthcoming about that fact in this forum, don't worry, it will never affect you in the real world, because you'll be none the wiser. You can trust that this is a common practice across the industry and yes, I realize that you, cavedave, can't just get a job at a liquor store to get bottle releases. My question is, am I supposed to just recuse myself from ever trying limited releases just because I do work at a liquor store? Or am I supposed to go wait in line at another store? I just can't fathom why it would annoy customers that employees like the same things they like.

 

I'm not a whale hunter. If you have it, I'll buy it. Most of the whales I've had were on draft somewhere and quite a few were disappointing to me. Just my particular taste.