private order #2?

northyorksammy · Post by **northyorksammy** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 12:09 am

Victory,Lake Louise, Lagunitas, and Midnight Sun

Beer Geek · Post by **Beer Geek** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 8:50 am

I'd be in for some Stone, Hair of the Dog, Bear Republic or Anderson Valley.

shintriad · Post by **shintriad** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 10:09 am

My vote goes for Bells or Bears, for what it's worth.

Of course, AleSmith or Three Floyds would also be great. And has anyone tried Maine's Allagash? Always been curious about that one.

Steve-E · Post by **Steve-E** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 10:46 am

Three Floyds tops my list, along with AleSmith & Bear Republic. That being said, I'll probably order something no matter who we choose.

A · Post by A » Mon Jun 05, 2006 11:43 am

Three Floyds would absolutely be at the top of my list for US beers. Bells would also be a very good choice.

Beer Geek · Post by **Beer Geek** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 12:10 pm

Is there a way for us to find out which US micros have cleared the LCBO lab in the last year? I’m sure that would help to narrow down our options. I’m assuming anything going into Volo’s has cleared, so maybe we can ride in on their coat tales.

inertiaboy · Post by **inertiaboy** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 12:23 pm

Beer Geek wrote:Is there a way for us to find out which US micros have cleared the LCBO lab in the last year? I’m sure that would help to narrow down our options. I’m assuming anything going into Volo’s has cleared, so maybe we can ride in on their coat tales.

I don't think this is necessary if we don't include the bars in our orders. Provided all orders are for personal consumption and no one orders more than 5 cases of any one product, we should be exempt from lab fees when we sign the lab test waiver.

If we want to give the bars the option of joining our orders, then I know that a test is required for anything that will be sold by the bars. As to we whether we need to pay a portion of the lab test, I don't know. I expect we would because the LCBO would then only need to deal with one price for the whole order.

Personally, I think it would be good to include the bars if they want to because it would increase their selection and help build local demand for these products, albeit very incrementally.

esprit · Post by **esprit** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 3:20 pm

Lab fees are applicable when 5 cases, in total, of any one product are ordered in a 12 month period. It's not 5 cases per person! The problem will be that the breweries won't find out about these fees until they receive payment from the LCBO and chances are they'll refuse to do business with the LCBO afterwards since it's unlikely you guys will turn around and pass the hat month's later to try to reimburse the brewery. In fact, the brewery wouldn't even know who to contact about this. We've already encountered breweries in the U.S. who have run into this problem.

inertiaboy · Post by **inertiaboy** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:19 pm

esprit wrote:Lab fees are applicable when 5 cases, in total, of any one product are ordered in a 12 month period. It's not 5 cases per person!

I thought that was the case so I explicitly asked Sylvia about this when putting together the Great Divide order. She told me that we would be okay provided no one person ordered more than 5.

I see two possbilities here:
1) because these orders are placed by individuals for personal consumption and do not involve an agent, there will not be a lab fee. if that is the case, then I wouldn't be happy as an agent because this is yet another thing that makes it harder to run my business
2) we get charged the lab fee and have to suck it up. in this case, we should be able to get the LCBO to absorb it because of what the information they gave me, but I don't have it in writing and it would probably be excruciating to try to do so

Derek · Post by **Derek** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 5:50 pm

Alesmith and Russian River have a ton of top rated brews:
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/396
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/863

And they're very difficult to find!

JerCraigs · Post by **JerCraigs** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:45 pm

inertiaboy wrote:
esprit wrote:Lab fees are applicable when 5 cases, in total, of any one product are ordered in a 12 month period. It's not 5 cases per person!
I thought that was the case so I explicitly asked Sylvia about this when putting together the Great Divide order. She told me that we would be okay provided no one person ordered more than 5.

I see two possbilities here:
1) because these orders are placed by individuals for personal consumption and do not involve an agent, there will not be a lab fee. if that is the case, then I wouldn't be happy as an agent because this is yet another thing that makes it harder to run my business

Different principle entirely. The assumption if you are an agent or a bar ordering is that you are selling to the public, hence the lab fee. Private order assumption is that it is for you alone, hence no need for a lab fee... ?

midlife crisis · Post by **midlife crisis** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 7:27 pm

Lab fees are applicable when 5 cases, in total, of any one product are ordered in a 12 month period. It's not 5 cases per person! The problem will be that the breweries won't find out about these fees until they receive payment from the LCBO and chances are they'll refuse to do business with the LCBO afterwards since it's unlikely you guys will turn around and pass the hat month's later to try to reimburse the brewery. In fact, the brewery wouldn't even know who to contact about this. We've already encountered breweries in the U.S. who have run into this problem.

I think what Esprit is saying is that the lab fee is deducted by the LCBO from the amount remitted to the brewer, and that this is often a nasty surprise from the brewer's point of view.

JWalter · Post by **JWalter** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 10:59 pm

re: the Lab fee - there's no point us all postulating about what might or might not happen, Inertia asked, was told that by the LCBO, let's leave it at that and we'll cross that bridge when we come to it...

Back on track - I'll probably be interested in any of the brewers already mentioned, but specifically Three Floyds (Alpha King!), Bear Republic or Bells (Two Hearted) would be super-dooper!

As far as organizing, Inertia - put together your notes and PM them over to me, I'm interested in perhaps building a little web-interface for this, so an 'admin' enters in the beer info & pricing, key dates, etc, individual users then login and put their orders in, we can forward a summary to the LCBO and users can download/print a PDF of the order form already completed with the basic info, they just add their payment info and fax it in... Cool? If we have a system for it, it makes it that much easier and we can make this a regular thing, our own little version of 'Seasonal Releases'

A · Post by A » Tue Jun 06, 2006 11:54 am

I believe somebody contacted AleSmith a while back and they were not interested in doing a private order. Shame....

Sounds like 3Floyds, Bells, Southern Tier and Bear Republic have received multiple votes. We know the latter two will do a private order, somebody want to find out about the former two?

inertiaboy · Post by **inertiaboy** » Wed Jun 07, 2006 10:32 am

Here are some notes that I shared with John Walter about arranging one of these private orders. We have both come to the conclusion that we are too busy right now to organize it so this would be a great time for volunteers to step forward. We thought 3 people would be a good number with the expectation that they would need to organize 1 or 2 orders each in the first 12 months while this gets off the ground.

The main benefit of being in this group is that you get a bigger voice in deciding the order in which we contact the breweries. I can answer some additional questions about getting this going, but really, there's not a lot too it.

Anyone want to take charge?

Steve...
------
The rough steps for getting this order together are:

1) Get a quote from the LCBO for the products. The LCBO-recommended
procedure is to fill in the form online and request a quote. That
procedure is crap because it only allows you to enter one product and it
assumes you are ordering by yourself (e.g. if the brewery has a minimum
of 36 cases, you won't even get the quote). If we plan on doing these
orders periodically, it might be best if we follow a procedure such as:

a) we contact the brewery to determine if they are interested in dealing
with us and the LCBO. we can get an idea of willingness and minimum
orders from them, plus it gives them that personal contact with their
end-customer. the Great Divide order was 80-90 cases, but I think
it is more realistic for us to order 36 or 48 cases for future orders.

b) after we get a positive response from the brewery, we should contact
Sylvia at the LCBO to get an official quote from them. we can pass on
all the brewery contact information to her and give them the
conversation history to speed things up. her contact info is
416-864-6739 / 1-800-668-5144, sylvia (dot) ramirez (at) lcbo (dot) com. this quote will
include the order forms and lab waivers, which you can scan and post
somewhere for people to download.

2) Determine interest from the BarTowel and bar crowd and set cutoff
dates for ordering. The online form would make this work a lot easier,
provided people follow through with their commitment to order. For the
GD order, people were quite good and pretty well everyone did follow
through. I collected names, email addresses, and order interest via
email/PM and forwarded it to Sylvia so she would have an idea of what
orders would be arriving. If I was to run this a second time, I'd
shorten the timelines since most people got their paperwork in quickly.
For example, once we have the quotes from Sylvia, we should be able to
turnaround the orders to her in less than two weeks.

That's pretty well it. And them we wait.

For a comparison, you can look at the private order at the Bieropholie
website. They've been doing this for a few years now so it runs very
smoothly for them. The main differences with them are:

1) They are able to get pricing information more quickly and
predictably, so they can set order dates well in advance. They
typically have two orders per month and have all the information and
forms available and posted at the beginning of the previous month (e.g.
the two July orders were listed 5 days ago).

2) They take care of all the payments as well. All deposits and final
payments are sent to Bieropholie who pay the bills and the distribution
is done through the SAQ. This is closer to what the agencies do in
Ontario. I highly recommend that we don't follow this route because
dealing with money is a recipe for disaster.

The Bar Towel

private order #2?

Alesmith or Russian River