KBS Price

$4.89/bottle in Louisiana

 

Been to 3 stores w KBS in NJ, one charged $7/bottle, another $8.99, and the third had 4 packs for $28. Most stores aren't priced like the deal you got going.. trust me.

 

Single bottles going for around 10-12$ in South Central PA.
4 Pack 25-28$

 

Single bottles are high but the four pack is not a terrible price.

 

I think you & @jlsims04 might be forgetting the real value of beers like KBS and BCBS. To the brewery, these rare once a year releases are not really driving a ton of profit, but what they do enable is to build a reputation and hype around the entire brand that helps shift regular beers year round.

From the brewery perspective, they want to have a big release party that makes the papers and gets beer geeks all excited, and then spread these beers as wide as they can throughout their distro footprint to build buzz for the Founders brand. If all the little local stores around town are tweeting limits and breaking up cases to sell singles to as many customers they can, Founders actually benefits - more people get to taste the rare beer, and it builds the reputation for the brewery overall.

It is basically the Ferrari model of generating revenue - sure they make a bit of profit selling a Ferrari, but they make a hell of a lot more selling posters and t-shirts. That is what breweries are trying to do with limited releases - build brand reputation, in the hope that when you are next in the store looking for a 6'er of something to drink watching the game you pick up a Founders a little more often that you might otherwise have done.

 

Ive pretty much agreed with you the entire time. My only comment was I wish it were kept more in chicago. I know that will never happen. I fully understand what beers like this do for a brand.

 

Sorry, don't mean to disagree with you or call you out. It is a bummer that the home town gets less love, but I do understand it.

Chicago will see less and less BCBS and KBS as Goose Island and Founders look to establish their brands in newer markets. I mean, Founders pretty much doesn't distribute anything west of Texas (maybe Arizona?) and California for sure is a big untouched market for them. Goose Island hasn't pushed hard into California much either, and there are cases of BCBS that were sitting out there apparently for weeks...

I ended up doing a trade with a guy in Rhode Island for a 4-pack of BC Barleywine... I mean it is ridiculous that I had to trade half way across the country to get a 4 pack of something that was made 10 miles from my house... I understand it, but I certainly don't have to be happy about it

 

Totally agree. I had to trade a prop to get a vanilla. I also had to trade for 2 coffee and 2 barleywine to get complete four packs for cellering purposes. Thats more what I was getting at. I dont expect them to keep enough in Chicago to have it on shelfs year round BUT it would be nice if there was a reservation process of sorts through the brewery to buy a full set every year. That would be really nice.

 

I read some of the comments in this thread and few different people mention "price gouging"

While I admit I did not try to hit my local store yesterday because it was $30 / 4pack and I'm not drinking many high ABV beers right now........

but I don't think that this is any way "price gouging". The reason being is this beer is selling out immediately the day it is being offered for sale everywhere basically. The demand for this beer (and others) is astronomically higher then the supply so the price is still much lower then basic economics would say it should be

 

Can I get you some cheese to go along with your full set for cellaring purposes?

 

All I have to say is damn. I have never seen any store, ever, mark up a bomber by 50%. Even some of the online retails stores only do 35%. Throughout the SE the most I've seen is maybe 30%, even on rare stuff.

 

How do you know, do you own a liquor store? I'm pretty sure bomber markups are ~50% as well. Craft beer in general for packs is ~25%. BMC is single digits, if that.

 

I manage a craft beer store and do all the pricing for the store. So yes, I know. Plus I price shop all my competition, buy online, and buy beers out of State whenever I travel. There's nothing we have in store that even touches the numbers your throwing out. 50% margin is typical of wine and spirits only.

 

Ditto! My time is worth way more than $30/hour. Spending time in lines or chasing beers around town is going to actually cost me much more on the bottom line.

 

To add fuel to the fire, Devil Dancer sells for the same price, if not a bit more. It also sells out just as fast around here. People may complain about the price, but they're not mad enough to not buy it...

 

One 4-pack for $26.50 (tax included).

 

Fair enough, thank you for the insight! Also Markup and Margin are hugely different numbers.

i.e. Liquor store buys a bottle for $5, sells for $7.50. Thats a 50% markup, but only a 33% margin.

 

50% isn't mark up - it is margin, so the mark up is basically 100%...
For craft bombers 40-50% margin is pretty standard around here, and for craft 4/6 packs 25-30% margin is pretty standard, so for a $10 6 pack, the store paid $7-7.50, and stands to make $2.50-3 on each sale, and for a $10 bomber they likely paid $5-6 and stand to make $4-5 on a sale.

All of this is of course before any operating costs (wages, utilities, rent, etc...), so if wages, rent and utilities are expensive in a certain area, the margins do tend to be higher, and I am in Chicago, which isn't exactly a cheap place to run a store.

You tend to see slimmer margins in the big box stores around here, but not by a lot, since they are already relatively thin on the regular 6-packs. The reason for bombers even existing and being on store shelves is the higher margin - no store could afford to fill shelves and shelves with bombers if the margin wasn't higher - they take up a lot of space and move slower.

I always am very surprised when people say the mark up / margins are lower where they live - I just wonder how stores can make ends meet as a business. Even at the low end of the range (40% bomber, 25% 6'er) if you assume 50/50 bomber / sixer sales then you end up with an average craft beer margin of about 30%, which means a store needs to shift $3,000 in sales per day to net $1,000 before costs. I mean, that is some serious volume of beer - 300 bombers or 6 packs, which is selling a bomber or a 6 pack every 2 minutes all day every day for 10 hours straight... so we are not talking small mom and pop stores. $1,000 a day gross margin doesn't leave you with much once you pay costs, so I always wonder how it can be so cheap other places - dirt cheap rents and very low wages I guess...

 

That's why I made statements like "to some extent" and "I wish"...

It's not that I don't understand it. I completely understand it! Founders knows exactly what they are doing. All Day IPA is their cash cow and KBS is their hype monster. They know this and they will release and sell All Day to make as much money as possible and release and sell KBS to make as much hype as possible. My response was to a statement of forcing liqueur stores away from splitting up 4 packs. I just don't see why? It just adds to the hype if you can only get 1 or 2 at a time.

 

Wow, that surprises me a lot - where in Georgia are you? Rent and wages must be incredibly cheap for margins to be that low...