Beer in Grocery Stores

atomeyes · Post by **atomeyes** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 8:10 am

so if you're a grocery store and you are in a prime area and do a great job with your beer program and crack $1 mil in sales by September, do you have to close your beer program down for 3 months?
so laughable.

and to think that Ed Clark is apparently a smart man.

rejtable · Post by **rejtable** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 11:29 am

cfrancis wrote:It's going to be interesting how the growlers is going to work. I can't see the LCBO staff filling on site. It will probably be the brewery providing pre-filled growlers.

So do these growlers have to be tested? And sit in a warehouse for a couple of weeks? And then the beer is horrendous by the time it gets to market?

How can they screw this up so badly?

Why would you think it'll be pre-filled growlers only? NB has a growler program now, and despite lots of early misteps, is now a really great thing if you live in Moncton, Fredericton or SJ.

You can walk up to one of their stores right now and pick up a Noire de Chambly or a TDD Saison du tracteur. Not pre-filled. They'd had growlers from DDC, TDD, Central City. Last week, growlers included TDD Dubai Pilee.

If NB can do it, surely the LCBO can make it work. If they want to.

Plus, NB has like 40K empty growlers doing nothing, that could get the LCBO started

groulxsome · Post by **groulxsome** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 11:39 am

rejtable wrote:
cfrancis wrote:It's going to be interesting how the growlers is going to work. I can't see the LCBO staff filling on site. It will probably be the brewery providing pre-filled growlers.

So do these growlers have to be tested? And sit in a warehouse for a couple of weeks? And then the beer is horrendous by the time it gets to market?

How can they screw this up so badly?
Why would you think it'll be pre-filled growlers only? NB has a growler program now, and despite lots of early misteps, is now a really great thing if you live in Moncton, Fredericton or SJ.

If it's pre-filled only, maybe they should not already have prefilled grolwers at the LCBO since 2014... http://www.momandhops.ca/growlers-now-lcbo/

Inkling · Post by **Inkling** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 12:42 pm

I don't like the idea of a separate area for beer (in grocery stores) but I can live with it as long as it's in the store itself and I only have to go to one checkout for all items. If it's like the wine outlets in grocery stores, then that's crap. My understanding though is that they just want to limit the hours to the same as the LCBO and Beer Store, so as long as it's in an area that can be closed off after-hours, then perhaps there's no issue with it being within the store itself and you'd use the same check out.

So much left to be desired, but hopefully it's the opening of a door that will start a process that is unstoppable.

boney · Post by **boney** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 12:48 pm

I swear I saw a pre-filled growler of something at the Dundurn LCBO in Hamilton a couple of months ago. I can't remember what exactly is was, but I seem to recall it being something from Hockley or Lake of Bays that was already available in a smaller format.

I can't see any LCBO investing the money or space to put in a growler fill station, even in the proposed retrofitted "boutique" stores. And how would they manage the growlers themselves? I'm assuming you would need to purchase a LCBO brand growler. It seems like it would be an enormous headache to formalize fresh pours in the massively bureaucratic system that is the LCBO and Ontario government.

I agree with many that the announcement is a really just laughable bureaucratic restructuring. I'm even scared that beer availability will suffer. Supermarket stores will have little incentive to be successful with the public only benefiting from the marginal convenience of being able to grab some widely available utility beer while shopping for groceries. Even if it just utility beer, however, will that sales niche dent LCBO sales enough to for the LCBO to pull back pushing beer as a product, resulting in a contraction of available brands?

chris_schryer · Post by **chris_schryer** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 1:33 pm

Because I live the lazy-life, my first post about the big change, is actually just me scooping a note Victor from Garden Brewers posted to Facebook yesterday. Some good perspective though.

http://www.torontobeerblog.com/beer-new ... n-brewers/

rejtable · Post by **rejtable** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 3:06 pm

boney wrote:I can't see any LCBO investing the money or space to put in a growler fill station, even in the proposed retrofitted "boutique" stores. And how would they manage the growlers themselves? I'm assuming you would need to purchase a LCBO brand growler. It seems like it would be an enormous headache to formalize fresh pours in the massively bureaucratic system that is the LCBO and Ontario government.

I don't understand why this is so hard to fathom. Again, NB is doing it now.

They currently fill whatever you bring in, just like Hill Farmstead! Without the 5 hour lines, though.

You can buy their growlers, but you don't need to use them. In fact, nobody is:http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-bruns ... -1.2882025

I have no idea if the ON hangup with exchange-only growlers at breweries is a law or a preference, so it maybe a bit more complicated here, but lord knows if ANBL can do it, surely the LCBO can make it work.

It sounds like the program, again after a rocky start, is going very well there. They are, I think, due to announce the future of the program (stop, continue, expand, etc) in the "spring", but I don't think anyone there is expecting it to slow down or go away.

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cfrancis · Post by **cfrancis** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 3:53 pm

Reg

Does NB have as nazi of a testing process as the LCBO? My main worry with the growler situation is that the beer gets held up before it hits the growler station.

Craig · Post by **Craig** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 4:13 pm

cfrancis wrote:Reg

Does NB have as nazi of a testing process as the LCBO? My main worry with the growler situation is that the beer gets held up before it hits the growler station.

More likely it would be something like making the LCBO outlets that offer it buy their kegs from the listings at TBS.

boney · Post by **boney** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 4:32 pm

rejtable wrote:
boney wrote:I can't see any LCBO investing the money or space to put in a growler fill station, even in the proposed retrofitted "boutique" stores. And how would they manage the growlers themselves? I'm assuming you would need to purchase a LCBO brand growler. It seems like it would be an enormous headache to formalize fresh pours in the massively bureaucratic system that is the LCBO and Ontario government.
I don't understand why this is so hard to fathom. Again, NB is doing it now.

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I totally agree that it's not that hard to do in theory. I just doubt it will ever happen because even the simplest things cannot get done within the bureaucratic nightmare that is the LCBO. It's like saying "I don't understand why we can't have a completely private liquor retail system. Alberta is doing it right now". Apples and rotting, maggot infested oranges.

rejtable · Post by **rejtable** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 5:52 pm

boney wrote: I totally agree that it's not that hard to do in theory. I just doubt it will ever happen because even the simplest things cannot get done within the bureaucratic nightmare that is the LCBO. It's like saying "I don't understand why we can't have a completely private liquor retail system. Alberta is doing it right now". Apples and rotting, maggot infested oranges.

come on that's not the same thing at all. lcbo and anbl are essentially the same creatures, hardly apples and oranges, and I have never seen anyone laud anbl as a progressive liquor regulator/retailer.

Chad, not sure about their testing.

I have no idea if this will work, and I was very sceptical it would in nb, but if it doesn't work it won't be because it's impossibe or so difficult as to be inconceivable.

boney · Post by **boney** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 6:08 pm

rejtable wrote:
boney wrote: I totally agree that it's not that hard to do in theory. I just doubt it will ever happen because even the simplest things cannot get done within the bureaucratic nightmare that is the LCBO. It's like saying "I don't understand why we can't have a completely private liquor retail system. Alberta is doing it right now". Apples and rotting, maggot infested oranges.
come on that's not the same thing at all. lcbo and anbl are essentially the same creatures, hardly apples and oranges, and I have never seen anyone laud anbl as a progressive liquor regulator/retailer.

I would say LCBO and ANBL are the same in that they are both provincially regulated. Operating on different scales with different taxation systems, political landscapes, historical social values etc etc do make them apples and oranges I'd argue. It doesn't really matter though, as the current Ontario government has made it clear they are only interested in superficial, non-meaningful fixes.

rejtable · Post by **rejtable** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 7:00 pm

Well, in the big picture this growler thing is mostly meaningless, but I'd say had you told me 2 years ago that we could pick up a growler of TDD DIPA in either Moncton or Toronto I'm pretty comfortable in saying almost nobody would have bet on Moncton.

midlife crisis · Post by **midlife crisis** » Fri Apr 17, 2015 7:58 pm

Bobsy wrote:An extra point of access sounds like a great idea to me, though I expect it will be a watered down version of what it should be. Already the mention of a separately enclosed area infuriates me. It smacks of puritanism and treating citizens as children.

Exactly this. I can just see beer in the little kiosk ghetto beside The Wine Rack and the cigar shop, outside the main confines of the store (think Loblaws on St. Clair at Bathurst or Fortinos on Fairview in Burlington). If so it will be pretty useless.

Belgian · Post by **Belgian** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 11:03 am

^ yes Useless beer kiosks that probably cost us more the they gain us - something to fear. And would be exactly the result of Ontario's bureaucratic ugliness, which by definition is lazy stupid and useless, but holds itself as gospel and unquestionable authority (LOL.) We're so bush-league and the province is holding us back.

Maybe it is ironic that these 'progressive' steps to better beverage alcohol retail are as yet still tainted with excessive and irrational control of a basic commodity, an old tendency which goes back to the soviet-style early LCBO stores we now try to laugh about today. The echoes of our post-prohibition past continue to mock us.