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

Umm... yes?

 

I buy a ton of beer from Total Wine. My nearest location has a great cold section.....plenty of fresh Firestone Walker too!

It is good to be in California I suppose....seems like most people complaining are in other states.

 

Ah, OK?

 

Woo-Hoo! We are in agreement.

Hot damn!!

 

I didn’t see your post before I made my post. But this is my biggest gripe. One the amount of beers that get cold stored and the particular beers that are cold stored is mind blogging. Personally I think TW makes their money on wine and sprits and beer is an afterthought.

 

I’d vote they just don’t know. I’m friendly with the TW store manager and I’ve turned cans over to show him the dates. I truly think he’s just caught up in corporate sales numbers etc. With these bigger chains your only as good as your stat sheets, and I’d guess that pegging old beers isn’t a stat.

 

Not the case here in NC, FW isn’t within 100 ft of the cold case. The cold case is mostly crap beers, but I’m guessing they’re high rotation beers based on a computer model. Just a guess.

 

I'd be willing to bet that more than a few breweries have a host of less than savory words about lobbyists and the impact their efforts have had on their ability to control their own product as it stands in relation to this particular conversation about the availability of fresh product for their consumers.

 

We don’t have Total Wine in Ohio. I’ve only been in one, near Fort Myers, FL. At first I was overwhelmed with the selection. Then I realized that most of the IPAs were months old. I saw Pseudo Sue and got excited (I’ve never had it), then I saw that it was something like six months old. I also wanted to try Jai Alai, and it was two months old. I was surprised it was not fresher, considering the source. I did end up buying that, knowing that some folks feel that it has fallen off a bit by then. In a side note, we now get Jai Alai in Ohio, and it pretty much sits now after the initial drop.
In general, I was kinda let down with the store. Kinda seems like the Sam’s Club of alcohol.

 

This is an age-old topic, and the person to blame for the problem is...

1. The brewer overproducing due to misreading (or ignoring) demand
2. Distributors for buying more than stores want - in an effort to get better bulk pricing. Also discouraging retailers from returning or rejecting old beer
   
3. Stores from taking too many different beers, not marketing them effectively, and not pulling and returning old beers for fear of hurting the relationship with the distributor. Also not rejecting beer that is old when distributor delivers it
4. Consumers for buying beer without checking dates

I avoid all of this by drinking almost exclusively BA high-ABV dark beers that keep well. I rarely think to check dates.

 

The problem here imo starts with the Distributor, he’s out to make money, and he doesn’t care about the product to a great degree, he just needs to force the beer into his stores. Here the Distributors also stock the shelves so the beers could already be 6 months old, and TW has no clue. This assumes they care about fresh product, I suspect as long as it’s code they don’t care, they want to make money too. And your right some brewers brew too much forcing it into their distribution network. The only way a buyer wins is to find a smaller bottle shop that can’t afford to be stocking the shelves that are 6 month old to begin with, they reject it sending it back to the warehouse. Who then just retag it and send it to a TW.

It’s no wonder sometimes I’m just as happy to buy PBR or Bud and just say the hell with it. But for the most part the problems are not a local beer problems, it’s regional and the national brewers that are having these problems. They are getting completely lost in the shuffle and it’s really a dilemma, some are starting to disappear from the shelves as the retailers can not afford to eat the beer they can’t sell. There’s empty space in the coolers, and space on the floor in smaller shops so product is being reduced, so someone is looking. Which brings us back to the Distributor problem, its a pain in the ass.

 

But most distributors we deal with won’t sell us beer they don’t think we can sell within code date, because they don’t want to have to pick it up and credit us. They are as watchful as we are, something new that they’re not sure will catch on in our market they’ll only sell me a case or two of, no matter how enthusiastic we might be, and how eager to get, say, a 10 case deal price on.

Total is new in our state but not new to me as I’m frequently back home in VA. My understanding is they are able to buy not just pallet deals, but truckload deals. My SPECULATION is that Total rather than the distributors hold the power in their relationships and so the distributor is unable to exercise the restraint that they exercise over the little ($3M a year, all sales including beer, wine, liquor, cigs, snacks, and kegerator/draft supplies) one-unit retail store where I toil.

 

It's called free labor.

 

Yep, and free labor, like free advice, is often worth what you pay for it.

 

I have had the same experience at Total Wine with beer and I won't buy anything there without a date on it. I only go there once every couple of months - usually shop local.

 

Actually, the large distributors have a dedicated salesperson/merchandiser and an individual merchandiser to follow each order that is delivered. These folks do excellent work and Total is very fortunate to receive such free service.

 

A new Total Wine opened near me a few years ago. I went for the Grand Opening, There was expired beer on the shelves at the Grand Opening, I thought that was pretty weak. It shows that it just wasn't a case of stock sitting there too long, the shelves were initially stocked with the expired beer....

 

Yeah, I'm going to go against the crowd and say that I like having TW as a part of my rotation. You just have to think of their beer department as having 5 sections- 'craft', imports, seasonal, refrigerated and locals. And only one of those is a problem. All stores have their strengths and weaknesses, which is why I have a rotation in the first place.

 

A few years ago our local Wegman's expanded their beer selection to include a lot of imports & crafts.

Weis decided they had to do the same so they fully stocked their beer section with a great variety, including some reallyrgood German imports; then realized that only a handful of their customers were willing to pay more than the equivalent of $2/beer.

Those very good beers sat there gathering dust until last summer when when about 1/3 of their beer selection (including all but the major crafts) was replaced with "hard" seltzer, soda, and iced tea; which fly off the shelves.

 

Do "enjoy by" or "best by" dates qualify as "pull dates", or is there some other code on the container and are these policies usually may or shall?