Weird subject but mostly with the influx of folks from out of state ..tonight expecially..my local brewpub just overwhelmed. I went to Fred Meyer late on to try get another pair of the eclipse glasses. The micro brew section was almost stripped bare except for Golden Road which has appeared here in the last few months. I think the childish bright colors of the box is a big turn off. Any way maybe this In-Bev buy over will fail!..If it cant sell out with thousands of Californians up here it has no chance. I got the last six of Citrus Mistress ( phew)..no glasses but a bro behind me took some from his car and gave me. The Mexican beer shelves sold out also..but the macro brews ( except PBR) were full. Someone told me once the BMC guys swoop in every few hours to fill the shelves..i d am beginning to dounbt it and their sales figures..at all times of days in a popular place like Fredys i see way more micros and indies getting bought.,,i assume this is why they are buying up micro brewers ike there is no tomorrow.
I am buzzed..just reporting what happens when there is a last minute beer rush at a supermarket ( Fred Meyer)..i think it gives a pretty good if anecdotal study of buying habits in S.Salem Oregon. Golden Road remains untouched..every other micro ransacked..macros barely touched ( except PBR). Just tends to make me understand why In-Bev buys micros..but makes me suspicious of BMC sales figures
Yeah, the GR shit just started showing up at the Freddy's across the street from me, and, either there are elves restocking non-stop, or that stuff ain't moving. Took 3 slots away from local/regional breweries too.
Yeah it puts to rest the lie that supermarkets only offer what the people want. BY the way the Way Out West Silver Moon/Kroger beer was sold out!
I assume many will say this is "just Oregon" and yes Oregon has a fantastic amoutn of local and other micros sold as a percentage of the whole beer market..but In-Bev knows that many other States and regions are becoming "Oregon" or will in the next few years, given the State legislatures change laws. This is why they buy..us out
There are a couple reasons unrelated to sales why you saw what you saw. The distributors DO have merchandisers that hit the big chain stores at least once a day. Some of the higher volume stores get double hit, once early in the AM, and once in the mid-late afternoon to restock for the evening shoppers. It's entirely possible that the AB merchandiser was at the store shortly before you and had just filled the Golden Road shelves. Conversely, the big Mexican brands and most of the micros are distributed by Colmubia down there, and it's entirely possible that their merchandiser hadn't been back for an afternoon restock and thus the shelves looked empty. Or, the sales rep may have simply dropped the ball and under ordered. The merchandiser can't stock it if it's not there. There's also the fact that there were a ton of visitors from out from California who were probably looking for something local to drink rather than picking up something like Golden Road that they can get back home. Oh, and I can't help but chuckle about you slamming Golden Road (an AB purchase) and then being excited to buy the last 6pk of Hop Valley (a recent MilllerCoors purchase).
It's gotten harder to keep track of who's owned by whom these days. I've considered keeping a list in my phone, or in a Google doc.
I know..they are local though. But I still never see Golden Road move at all. And they take up 4 or 6 shelf spaces that were once available to smaller brewers. And no one can tell me there are was this huge demand for Golden Road all across the PNW..that the retailer just had to throw out 4 others?
The chains do "resets" every 6 months or so. Distributors come in, pitch new brands (or line extensions), and then the chain rearranges their set by removing things that don't meet their minimum rate of sale, and adding new items based on the sales pitches. Everything they do is passionless and numbers driven, and for the most part they don't particularly care if the beer is local or not. The spaces those Golden Road 6pks "took" were vacated by things that would have been discontinued any way. As for why they chose to add those instead of some other brand is hard to say, but I would bet that the distributor and brewery rep went in with a slick power point presentation showing explosive growth at other Kroger stores in other regions, complete with testimonials from other regional buyers and a bunch of IRI/Neilsen numbers to back them up. As for whether or not there's demand for the beer, you never know unless you put it on the shelf and find out, so sometimes you take a gamble on something new. If no one is buying it they'll see it in the numbers, and the product will be replaced with something else when they do the spring 2018 reset in March.
KInd of like how when B-INbev took over Goose Island we saw the supermarkets stock 5 or 6 shelf spaces..that after a while went down to one. You would think retailers would wise up to AB-INBEV sales pitch?
I'm sure they're not stupid, but on the other hand, it's tough to say no to some of the "inducements" AB-InBev offers. I'm not as familiar with the store retail side as I'm sure Chris is, but when I lived in Eugene, there was a certain growler station (that has since gone out of business) that routinely would carry an unusually large selection of Ab-InBev stuff on tap (lot of Elysian and Goose Island beers). My understanding was that the owner was getting a significant price break on the kegs, and would also get kegs of GI sours and BCBS whenever they hit town. The owner wasn't a real savvy craft beer guy (he was an entrepreneur/businessman), and I think to him one craft beer was pretty much like any other. So he was all over the idea of buying kegs of craft at a discount (and God knows it didn't bother him if they were made under the Ab-InBev umbrella). Anyway, just throwing that out there as an example of why some otherwise pretty smart and sophisticated retailer might buy into the Ab-Inbev hype. Even if they hate Ab-InBev and think their products suck, it's pretty hard to say no to a possible fast and easy buck. I could see giving a new product line a chance, hoping that maybe it will do well for a while, and maybe make a killing off of sales.
Was trying to compose a response along these lines, but you did it better. Kroger-sized accounts have ways to get some "co-operation" from the vendor if sales are slow.
