Finback (2019)

Any indication if the Weller BQE will last until around 2/230?

 

It is literally the same 1 terminal / tiny table setup from prior years.

I would say it won’t be sold out by 2, because everyone on the initial line will still be in it.

 

Seriously. This is license branch-esque.

 

They haven’t even gone through the first 50 people in line yet.

 

Single barrel sold out and limits cut. They must have had under 100 bottles and didn’t announce anything until you got to the order desk

 

Horrible. I moved 5 feet in 30 minutes. I left.

 

To be fair, they did mention at noon that it would sell out.

 

Same. After half an hour of barely moving. I left. I didn’t think it was possible to make this worse every year but congratulations to Finback to achieving what I thought was impossible.

 

where did hey announce this? We heard the raffle announcement and nothing else. Was maybe 2/3rds pf the way down the line with an 11:30 arrival. Nobody around me heard it either.

 

And God said unto Moses, “and I shall set up only one POS, to weed out the weak from the believers.” And as He had intended, the undeserving, looking for easy pickings, walkethed away from the line. And the strong, although they may have lookethed like neckbearded lambs to the slaughter, were rewarded with The Single Barrel.

Here endeth the lesson.

 

Breweries are immune to criticism IMHO. They have a product that people will line up for and even when people complain, they still sell their product, and, in many cases, have a bunch of fan boys stick up for the brewery by using the term "entitled" to anyone who thinks things like good communication, customer focus, etc. matter. I am sure there are exceptions...just not many.

 

Right after they talked about the raffle they mentioned mentioned that the beer might not last the line.

While this is true, they explicitly told people on Instagram that there would be more than one POS. It was also a little frustrating that some of the employees seemed more interested in saying hi to customers than moving the line along.

 

Person in front of me got the last salty caramel. Guy behind me got the last regular. There was about 50 people still in line who would only get banana.

 

According to the server at 330, everything but banana sold out within an hour of opening, but it's "too hard" to update social media or tell the 20ish people who were in line when I got there (or the couple dozen behind me). This was my first visit for BQE and my last trip to Finback, at least until they open in Brooklyn.

 

Definitely wasn’t an hour as I was checked out at about 2:40 and see above for what was left. As soon as I got there they announced the regular was cut to 2pp then about a half hour later it was 1. Odd that they made so little of the base. Or more likely they’re sending a bunch of it to MA.

 

I have never seen anything like how slow that line was moving today. It was like they were individually filling the bottles for each customer.

 

Yeah, at this point they’ve been open for what like 6 years? They’ve done several of these releases and surely they’ve seen the feedback. They clearly don’t care. Brooklyn’s gonna be a disaster if they run it the same way they run their current place.

 

As much as people bitch and moan about Other Half for various reasons, they've at least taken SOME initiative in improving their customer service/line processing.

 

They set aside a few cases of each BQE variety for when the Gowanus location opens, so I’m excited to experience this shitshow closer to home

 

Maybe they’ll figure out a way to have a few more POS systems at the Brooklyn location.