Ever since they ceased to be an Employee owned company have been puzzled at were they want to be. I know most do not rank them but FS has always been close to my heart, but nowadays i se less of their beers at premium places and way more at ..shall we say..dumps? Their session stuff still sell like hotcake at Freddys..except the one i like most..the Sesion Cerveza. I only ever see this in the areas of Salem with large poor and immigrant ;populations. Does Full Sail actually have a say in this? Its no big deal my local Mom and Pop place has Sesion.... but i never see it in Freddys or Safeway or even Walmart
I saw plenty of Session Cerveza this afternoon at Tanasbourne Whole Foods. Not always the most reliable beer spot, but certainly not a "dump."
So it appears they market differently in heavily Latino places like Salem. Which ic cool the whole reason for the "Session" line was because of Latino laborers anyway. Also just back from another ghetto store and they had the Route 63 and Session Lager in cans..first I have seen this in Salem. Good for FS this demographic is the future
I am also a Session fan and look forward to the cans back here in GA. Was told the cans were so popular that they delayed the east coast distro.
They're a 30 year old brewery that's struggling for relevance because they haven't had any home runs since they launched the Session line-up. If by "dumps" you mean immigrant owned C-stores and/or places in low income and/or suburban neighborhoods, it's not a surprise. There's a bunch of factors at play; generally speaking, older and/or lower income people tend not to be as craft-savvy, and if they drink craft at all it's likely to be something from the "old standby" brands that they've been drinking for 20+ years. The legacy brands like Deschutes, Widmer, and Full Sail may be losing market share in Oregon, but they are still selling a metric shit ton of 6pks and 12pks at grocery and convenience stores. Also, at the risk of over-generalizing or stereotyping, immigrant convenience store owners (especially Korean, Indian, and Pakistani) are known for being "frugal" (to put it nicely), and tend to favor products with low prices, good margins, and high sell-through. Combine those two biggest factors and you start to get an idea of why you see brands like Full Sail in random bodegas but not at upscale grocery stores or bottle shops. The big chain stores do "resets" and adjust their shelf layouts (called schematics) twice a year, spring and fall. 3-4 months prior to the reset, the various distributors and brewery reps hold presentations for the corporate buyers, who then decide which products to add or delete. Session Cerveza wasn't released until March, so it's entirely possible that they didn't have everything in order in time to present it back in Dec/Jan for the spring reset, but you can bet they'll present it for the fall reset, and they'll come armed with IRI data pulled from places like Whole Foods and Grocery Outlet to show them what they're missing out on. Not really. A brewery or their distributor can go make a sales pitch to anyone they want, but ultimately it's up to the store owner or buyer to decide what products they stock. .
I noticed the same thing with Pyramid..around here the Outburst IIPA sells very well among , shall we say, the non beer geekery. When short on cash..its a good enough beer. I even saw a few homeless dudes drinking a 22 of it.
