A few observations

re #2 - it's called supply and demand. I think it was covered in Economics 101.

 

OK, Otis, I'll play along:

1. I don't know all in the ins and outs of distribution, but I've always assumed that it's not that easy for retailers to return OOD merchandise. I'm sure it depends on the brewery and the distributors, but given how many brewers don't bother with dates at all, I imagine it's a royal pain in the ass to send stuff back (particularly when you factor in paying someone to police the shelves and pull anything past it's date). Plus, how do you deal with "bottled on" dates? Who decides how long is too long to keep selling these beers? So, I guess my response to your question (I was gettin' there. What? Did you have something better to do?) is that I think most retailers just leaves stuff til it sells and if it isn't selling, they sure aren't buying more. Maybe after a while, they'll put it on sale just to clear it out, but I don't think anyone but the most professional bottle shops actually put much effort into keeping old beer off the shelves.
2. I think people are willing to pay a premium for something they haven't had before, for the novelty of it, but after that it has to earn the extra $$. There are a handful of beers I'll "overpay" for, but that number is way smaller than the number I've overpayed for once.
3. As a PA resident who lives within 20 miles of the NJ border, I couldn't agree more. Not the Jersey is a great beer state, but at least their laws allow for enough bottleshop competition to keep prices on day-to-day beer reasonable. Still wish I had easy access to a truly GREAT bottleshop, though.

 

re: 1- yeah, but that place will see their craft start to become less and less profitable as it goes on. There are tons of retailers around here who 'got into' craft and now have shit that looks like it belongs in a museum as most everyone wised up to the good local places. Not saying they won't still sell their shit, but it's not all going to move and they're selling less each day.

2. I dunno, if it's good enough it's worth it. My point was MBC isn't worth it. I'd pay $10 a bottle for Alpine, because that shit is worth it.

3. that's how I feel about MA! love border jumping.

 

This is the only question I see in your entire post so I shall comment...what do you suggest these shops do? Sell the beer back to their distributor (is that even an option)? Put these old beers on sale? Order less of these beers in the future? No matter what happens, a shop can only predict so well how much beer their clientele will order (with the exception of rare, limited beers). If they don't stock enough then the customer will go to another store for the beer, resulting in lost sales but no excess inventory. If they stock too much it sits on a shelf, resulting in excess inventory but no lost sales.

Guess you'll have to start polling bottle shops in your area to get the answer. As for the rest of your post, cool story, bro.

 

I know some shops that do a discount rack for beer that isn't selling or is out of season. Some of them I wouldn't be surprised if they just give them to employees at a super low price just to get them out of the store. Or you could cook with them.

 

That's what I'm saying. There's enough supply so they won't pay high prices. The stuff they can't get at home, or the rarz... well there's less supply. The price goes up. People generally have less of a problem paying extra for a treat or something they can't get very often vs something they can get any time they like. This pretty much goes for any hobby. It really shouldn't be too much of a surprise. I paid $50 for GI Rare, but I don't spend $50 on bombers of stuff I buy for every day drinking.

 

So a well-established bottle shop is able to pin-point when the last bottle/can of XYZ beer will be bought when their shipments arrive? Interesting.

 

This is all true as far as it goes, but it doesn't address the vast number of new SKUs that flood the market every year (month? week?). If a bottle shop settles for stocking a tried and true selection that they're fairly confident will sell to their current clientele, they risk loosing that clientele to the shop down the street that takes a chance on buying a few cases of every new beer that comes down the road. Now some of those beers are going to be winners, and some, not so much. Presumably, owners/purchasing people sample the new offerings and try to judge what's likely to sell in their shop, based on the data you refer to above. But it's far from an exact science. So, basically shop owners are faced with either taking a risk on that new DIPA that seems like it might be the next HopSlam and maybe hitting a home run, OR passing on it and hoping that the guy down the road who does stock it doesn't end up wooing away a significant number of your customers who decide he's got more to offer them. If owners needed to do this calculation every so often, no big deal. But when they're faced with 30 of these decisions every time a distributor's rep stops by the store ..... they can study the POS register tea leaves from now til the end of time and still end up unable to sleep at night.

 

Agreed. Personally, if I owned a bottle shop, I'd probably be the guy that tried everything the distributors rep brought by the store. Then the next morning when I woke up and got up off the floor, I'd probably order some of everything that I'd found reasonably palatable the day before. I'd do what I could to call attention to the new offerings (maybe a "What's New" section somewhere in the store) and then after a month or two, begin packaging single bottles of several of the new brews into mix sixes (unless contractually prohibited from doing so) and offering them at a reasonable discount to try to drive sampling. And if that didn't work, I'd lock up the shop, drink up my stock, turn out the lights and abandon the building. All in all, I figure I'd run through my initial investment in about 4 months tops. This is just one of the may reasons I do not own a bottle shop.

 

Limited releases/new beer/expansion is usually where i see good beer stores get into trouble. This is compounded by either overzealous beer guy owners/managers who want their store to have the coolest stuff or ignorant owners/managers who rely on distributors to tell them what to stock (bad idea). Of course then you have to deal with distributors who are pushing product on the store and/or case drops which are too good to pass up. If someone gets the opportunity (and believe me if your not a mega mart store it is very often an opportunity) to get a limited release/new beer how much should they order especially if they're told by the distributor that they will only get one shot at it?? And why would they not order an abundance of something knowing full well it might sit a while but also knowing they will save an additional $10-$20 per case? Combine this with the extremely limited shelf space of most stores and you'd be surprised how few mistakes it takes to have a store full of older product.