Total Wine doesn't get it (yet another freshness rant)

Almost... these stores had been in business for years, in one case decades. Astonishing coincidence rather than correlation.

 

So, you object to correlation, but not anecdotal. Got it. (Of course, mine was both, so I guess you're ok with that part....)

 

It's the Kobayashi Maru of Total Wine.

They've got to carry the flagships from every local, regional, national, micro, macro and mucho brewery as well as the industry stalwarts and probably get bamboozled by distro sales to buy "x" of this to get a case of a special release, but in reality most of the selection won't move due to overkill and the fact that the cool kids are only buying brewery releases anyway. Then they can't buy fresh flagships and stalwarts because they have old and dusty on the shelf that distros and breweries aren't going to be accountable for, so people only buy trendy new freshies, perpetuating the problem ad infinitum.

I kind of feel bad for TW to be honest.

 

Bread is not "tossed" by the retailer and the freshness "sell by" date coding is long before it becomes moldy and "could make someone sick". Bread at the retail level from large bakeries, in most cases, is managed like beer - the bakery (self-distribution) or distributing company is in charge of maintaining freshness and they pull old stock - just as beer wholesale distributors are supposed to do.

Just Goggle around some baking company sites (particularly job descriptions):

Lots of baking companies maintain their own "day old" Outlets where the pulled products are sold. Lots of it nowadays is also donated to food banks, etc. (Beer, on the other hand, being an alcoholic beverage is supposed to be "destroyed"but is sometimes distilled for the alcohol, etc.)
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As noted many times, the way the Beer Distribution Three Tier system is designed in most states, and by contract, is that it is the wholesale distributor which is charged with maintaining fresh beer on the shelves, not Total Wine, Costco or any other retailer.

 

I meet like with like. Show me data I'll be happy to do the same.

Also my observation is not anecdotal it's a compare and contrast field study. It remains to be validated by further observation but it contains reasons to suggest that other factors are at work that just a big store moving in to new territory.

 

Well the employees at the TW I stop at inDE think they know about beer and give really poor suggestion to customers and false information about what a beer taste like. I do find myself only going to TW 3-4 times a year anymore. The selection was better a few years back and the prices are no better than here on most except Sierra Nevada core and holiday 12 packs and a few others like arrogant bastard DFH core and a few others.

Unless I Amin the area I no longer make the 30-40 minute ride.

Enjoy

 

A couple of years ago, there would be several different anti-INBEV rants all going at the same time. There was a time when only 10 threads were displayed on the "main page" and 4/10 had some INBEV beef.

My issue is that the dead horse beating is that it has become monotonous and stale.

Time to move on.

 

LMAO...

wow that's bad.

Worst store I ever saw was on the border of Illinois and Iowa, in West Dubuque. Van's Liquor. Went there last year. They had IPA from 2016, and tons of shelf beers that weren't made anymore, in fact I found a Dogfish Head WWS pre-aged for me, 2013. Haha.

 

For the record I don't mind shopping at Total Wine as I'm a serial date checker, but its their singles section **** that gets me. There's like 40-50% mark up on every single. $9.99 six pack normally? Pay $2.99 a single. Give me a break. Perhaps that's an effort to move their stock though, right in line with the topic of this thread.

 

It's not just big beer that plays the limited release game. Pretty much every brewery I dealt with as a beer buyer did too.

 

If it moved, but the worst date offenders I see at TW are in the single section. I’ve seen on the shelves 5 pack, yes a 5 pack, because a guy wanted a better date and picked from a 6 on the shelf. So guys do check, but ya, it comes at a premium price, but going to singles only works for those who imo don’t know any better. If they don’t date the bottle don’t bother.

 

Just before the Home Depot in Danbury opened, Carl Dill called me in to his office at his flagship store in Peekskill. He had a map on the wall of where Home Depot was opening stores in the area. He explained that he would not be needing any more floor maintenance and window cleaning as he was closing all his Dill's Best stores. He said he knew he would be unable to compete with Home Depot. He said Home Depot is in the position of telling lumber suppliers (he used that as an example) how much they will pay for the lumber and buying it buy the train load.

Of course, one example of how big stores directly put smaller companies out of business doesn't negate your point that other stores who close likely were going to go out of business anyway. And certainly it cannot be used to bolster the argument that TW does the same as Home Depot did to Dill's Best, and other companies, who left the home improvement market here, but it certainly is a better example than any of the conjectures you make in your posts

 

I hear what you are saying, but I should say that the example described in my post is not a conjecture, it's a reality based on having been there multiple times and having learned a bit of the history of both towns, talking with locals, sharing a beer with locals, etc.

As a long time suburan resident in the same community in SEPA, I'm familiar with other examples of local impact of big stores, e.g., Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart, K-Mart, Shopping Malls, etc. on small local businesses. Those that have closed often were be small, local mom and pop stores. In addition, I'm also familiar with more than one small family owned hardware store that is still alive and well in their local communities. While one recently closed after about over 100 years years of being in operation that closure was not because of Home Dept, etc., it was a result of no one in the line of ownership/inheritance wanting to bag their current profession and take it over.

In other words blaming evil intent by a single company or business for what is basically a refletion of a widespread societal change involving many factors is a misleading way to think about a widespread common phenomenon.

 

@JackHorzempa

Hi Jack! Not a big poster on the main forum here, but I always value your insight & opinions.

I agree with your emphasis on buying local & fresh, but I wonder...this board is kind of a bubble. We're all huge beer nerds who think & talk about this stuff WAY more than 99% of the beer buying public.

I think the vast majority of beer drinkers...including "craft" beer drinkers (whatever that means anymore) don't bother to check dates, ever.

So, while I wish your prediction that breweries / distributers / retailers providing out-of-code or "old" beer would feel financial stress for doing so is true, I don't think that's the case. I hope I'm wrong and you're right, but I think marketing and name-brand recognition has way more to do with the financial success of all these entities than freshness...even actual quality takes a backseat, regardless of freshness.

Thoughts?

 

I've thrown this out on "freshness" threads before, but, hang with me here.

If you go to a mini mart, and buy an icecream cone out of the freezer, it has all the gov't writing and labels, and a bar code. You go to the grocery store, buy the same product, but all the info is on the box, and each individual package inside is labelled "not packaged for individual sale", or some such legalese.

Could a similar tact be used in the beer industry? To stop retailers from breaking up old sixers/cases to dump old stock, the brewery could label it to be sold as a unit, or returned. Which would put more onus on wholesalers.

Feasible or not? @jesskidden

 

Well, AFAIK no one said anything about evil, or even bad, I sure didn't, and no one said that the benchmark is forcing every single similar business to close

I shop happily at Walmart and Home Depot, even though losing my biggest customer due to Home Depot almost put me out of business. I am a capitalist, and I think the businesses that get put out of business by big corporations using their clout to control suppliers and undercut prices are examples of successful capitalism. Heck, in the cleaning and maintenance field I would gladly have put out of business all the big guys who hired illegals and charged prices I couldn't meet. Hence I feel no need to conjecture or form opinions based on kind, alternate interpretations of what could be going on. It does not make me happy nor sad to understand that the most likely scenarios of the motivations and realities for businesses closing in the wake of mega businesses moving in to areas are mirror images of what I related about the closure of the Dill's Best chain of home improvement stores.

I am sure your intelligent eye puts an intelligent meaning to those things you witness as you travel, but let's be realistic. We aren't evil people to understand that business is about out-competing the competition. We aren't evil people to understand that Home Depot and WalMart (and maybe TW too, IDK) put competition out of business. When out-competing occurs the winner stays in business, and the loser(s) go out of business up to the point that the local economy can support the mega store and whatever competition can keep their niche(s).

 

True, nobody used the word “evil.”

Also you, and I, at the end of the day are after making the same or similar points. What I think is missing is some context created earlier in the thread by others.

More to follow.

 

I don’t think it’s a secret Walmart is in the same position that Home Depot is, they get to dictate price to their suppliers as well. Walmart is not known for outstanding customer service, quality is up to the individual entity I suppose, and I like most use Walmart quite a bit. I don’t suppose there’s enough TWs to have the same advantage, the pricing structure from the local mom and pop shops are close enough to not really be a consideration for the beer. Wine is noticeably less expensive though imo. Funny enough if I go into a TW here you cannot buy a simple 6 pk or Budweiser in any form. You can buy 12 pks and cases, but not a 6, I’d have to go to the local gas station for that. I do spend money at TW, but I closely watch canning dates, but I do this everywhere, the mom and pop stores aren’t much better than TW, for different reasons I think, but they have their problems as well.

 

This. TW is great for buying by the package... local bottle shops more so for "singles".