Total Wine doesn't get it (yet another freshness rant)

I recognize this 'rant' is focused at Total Wine & More (and justifiably so) but....

The issue of too much old beer on beer retailers shelves is not just a Total Wine & More issue. The beer industry (i.e., Brewery -> Wholesale Distributor -> Beer Retailer) is seriously screwed up and with the increasing competition of new small. local breweries opening up at rates of 1,000+ per year they would be best served to fix this problem. Or else more and more beer consumers will just purchase fresh beer from their small, local breweries instead.

Cheers!

 

https://www.firestonebeer.com/beers/fresh-beer.php

 

This topic bothers me for some reason. Go to any wegmans or beer distributor and theee is a shit ton of shelf ipa that no one will ever buy!! Where does it end?? Maybe with 30% of these brewers failing in the next 2-3 years?? Or maybe a 50% drop in supply at any given spot? Otherwise it will only get worse.

 

Uh, you left customer out of your equation. Beer that doesn't sell fresh, is gonna stick around until it's old. Then, we get the weekly freshness bitch session.

 

I miss the days of less skus. Now we have a ton of breweries that are constrained with capacity issues or just suck, plus a lot of classic breweries can't come close to meeting their capacity and their beer gets old on the shelf. I am also not a of the new craft world that reminds me of the wine industry. I don't want to drive all over the place to get 4 packs of beer and pay top dollar for it. I'm very disappointed to what the craft scene has turned into and I'm just glad I can brew what I enjoy for a lot less than these new boutique breweries are charging.

 

No date I don’t buy it. Too much old beer I stop going.

TW is hit/miss as are pretty much all places.

I told a TW employee once that the SN Torpedo was over a year old and asked if they had anything fresher. In a snarky reply I was told no, there is nothing wrong with the beer we sell, beer does not go bad. I just walked away chuckling.

Enjoy

 

There is nothing new about the concern for beer at Total. It's a great place to buy major brands, but the broad selection of singles, many on bottom shelves, is a recipe for bad beer sliding through full retail.. I applaud Total for working to bring as much as possible in a big way. I really believe that the old-fashioned grocery type shelving and presentation lends itself to product getting lost, and are not easy to shop..

 

My TW is good but you have to be very diligent about checking. They excel at getting a ton of the seasonal items in that are usually fresh, key is knowing when they drop so you can get the fresh cans/bottles. The dark side of TW for me starts with singles. Most of the time its all old trash, they annoyingly will put a few fresh items in to confuse, so you pretty much have to check each bottle. You can find some good stuff but you need to work for it.
I typically use total wine if I know some common items dropped, they typically are fresh and cheaper. But when it comes to local I go direct to brewery or my local small guys who I know and its always fresh.
Sadly if your not the beer police you get burned. Check check and check again is my rule.

Cheers

 

Because ideally the beer industry would remove this old product from the shelves just like old milk, old eggs, old bread, etc. are removed with absolutely no customer involvement here.

Cheers!

 

I placed an order online, for a family member to pick up in another state, at a Total Wine. My order was all IPAs. When I finally got the order, I found every one of the IPAs to be old and way past their freshness date. Unless it’s a fresh seasonal, I won’t buy beer from Total Wine anymore (and Gabriel’s for the same reason).

 

There are laws that will not allow wholesalers to pick up old beer. In my estimation a good retailer has a good notion of what they may sell through. But to buy everything available and then build up a cache of beers for credit due to dating is a disaster. It really is not a good model.

 

Exactly, ideally. But old bread, eggs and milk present a health hazard if consumed beyond a certain age and so the brand can be sued, etc. This is not the case for beer.

Customers too share in the responsiblity for there being old beer on the shelves.

 

"old" beer will not make make one ill, it will just not be an optimal experience. Old milk, eggs, meat, etc can make people ill, and worse. How many of us here have, and very much enjoy, beers that are years, if not decades, old? Many of us. A 4-5 month old IPA will not be the end of someone.

If the freshness freaks are willing to pay the upcharge that is inevitable if every single one of our 7000+ breweries put strict retail age enforcement into effect, fine. If not, say hello to our corporate overlords.

 

At Total Wine one year when the Oktoberfests came out, I found one that was from the previous year

 

Diligence!
I found bags of potato chips that were 3 months past their best by date at a supermarket the other day.

 

I wouldn’t buy em...but I’d still eat em.

 

Or I can just purchase fresh beer from my numerous local, small breweries. There is no 'upcharge' there.

The distributing breweries can either learn to compete or they can lose money (e.g., folks buying local instead to obtain their fresh beers). Maybe we will be reading about more distributing breweries closing in 2019 & 2020?

Cheers!