IPA freshness & Collateral Damage

The same reason I think the best bars have 15-30 well thought draft lines as opposed to 100+. I never understood why so many people wet themselves over bars with the "dude they got 100 draft lines!!" mentality. You're not gonna drink a 100 beers in a night.

 

Yeah, but i'm surprised you don't have a formed AB alliance, like we do, for just this reason.. we all order together for a few smaller brands, cover the footprint for the entire state, and split it up at a Depot center. With 16 or so distribs in the group, we all get fresh beer on the regular, and it's pretty easy to put together a truck full of beer.

 

True, but remember, the Japanese were trying to appeal to a mass market with brand loyalty and somewhat predictable buying patterns. Demand for the hundreds (thousands?) of craft beers available in a given market is a far more difficult bulls eye to hit. In this example Toyota is more like AB.

 

I think this would be an excellent way to weed out inferior beers/breweries.

Better breweries would get better distribution and representation, because they would be the one that sold.

 

We're in a rural area, distributers are few and far between, awesome idea though!

 

pitch it. you'll be promoted. you band together with the other AB wholesalers, form a separate corp, and act as one big wholesaler. It's great for attracting new partners to cover a whole state with one network.

 

I'll review your notes and maybe have a word with my manager, thanks for the brainstorm! This is advocacy in action!

 

If you need help, let me know. I actually serve as an independent consultant for our NY network- they paid me a nice consulting fee too! Shoot me a PM. I helped build our website and designed our logo... it's nothing amazing, but apparently well enough to deserve an extra paycheck at the end of the year. Kind of cool, too, as a craft specialist getting to work with the owners of other large distribs- because many of them learn as much from me about craft as I do from them about logistics and running a large business.

 

With this, I think with shops having "IPA Deal" as in if you buy a mixed 6 pack of IPAs that are close to going out of date, even being still good, maybe give a discount to them. That could also be said of any style. That being said, with stores, they are looking to profit on every beer and even if a beer is going out of date, they still want a profit. Such will leave some IPAs on the shelves.

 

The number of Stouts and BA Stouts is way ahead of the amount of Strong ales, Old Ales, Scotch ales and BA versions

I agree with OP that more brewers should take after Stone's Enjoy By.