Beer in Grocery Stores

sprague11 · Post by **sprague11** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 11:18 am

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.

They don't - NB Liquor's main concern is (or at least was) people bringing beer back from Quebec for resale. When I lived there there were a lot of guys in northern NB who would sell out of their garage. A lot of stores and bars that would sell things not in NB stores (again, usually Quebec or US beers) if you knew *how* to ask.

Belgian · Post by **Belgian** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 11:21 am

atomeyes wrote: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?

Laughable indeed; how would they prevent this embarrassment?

I think the answer atom is they would do NOT such a good job on the beer program in the first place. I wonder WHO they could consult on that? Hmmm...

saints_gambit · Post by **saints_gambit** » Sat Apr 18, 2015 8:34 pm

Belgian wrote:
atomeyes wrote: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?
Laughable indeed; how would they prevent this embarrassment?

I think the answer atom is they would do NOT such a good job on the beer program in the first place. I wonder WHO they could consult on that? Hmmm...

OR, and hear me out, maybe the grocery stores lobby to change that because it's stupid and it goes away because what, Molson and Labatt are going to tell grocery stores what they can and can't do? It's a whole new fight, guys. It's not just going to lie there. It's a more complex problem now.

rejtable · Post by **rejtable** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 9:59 am

sprague11 wrote:They don't - NB Liquor's main concern is (or at least was) people bringing beer back from Quebec for resale. When I lived there there were a lot of guys in northern NB who would sell out of their garage. A lot of stores and bars that would sell things not in NB stores (again, usually Quebec or US beers) if you knew *how* to ask.

I think you are mixing up two things. The idea that a few (I think you have a different definition of "a lot" than I do) people bootleg from their garage doesn't mean that NB Liquor does or does not test.

Masterplan · Post by **Masterplan** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 12:36 pm

saints_gambit wrote:
Belgian wrote:
atomeyes wrote: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?
Laughable indeed; how would they prevent this embarrassment?

I think the answer atom is they would do NOT such a good job on the beer program in the first place. I wonder WHO they could consult on that? Hmmm...
OR, and hear me out, maybe the grocery stores lobby to change that because it's stupid and it goes away because what, Molson and Labatt are going to tell grocery stores what they can and can't do? It's a whole new fight, guys. It's not just going to lie there. It's a more complex problem now.

A grocery store like loblaws isn't going to bend to the will of the Macros, it'll be the other way around.

Although I suspect we'll see a resurgence of PC beer. Hopefully they return to making Dave's Doppel gold...Rip Mr. Nichols.

Belgian · Post by **Belgian** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 4:53 pm

Masterplan wrote:[...I suspect we'll see a resurgence of PC beer. Hopefully they return to making Dave's Doppel gold...Rip Mr. Nichols.

Dead Dave's Doppel Gold™

I like it.

El Pinguino · Post by **El Pinguino** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 8:15 pm

Bobsy wrote:Oh... and two years to get this in place in just 150 of 450 stores smacks of bureaucracy.

Ya, that's a joke to me.
Should take 2 months to roll this out, not 2 years.

saints_gambit · Post by **saints_gambit** » Mon Apr 20, 2015 11:14 pm

El Pinguino wrote:
Bobsy wrote:Oh... and two years to get this in place in just 150 of 450 stores smacks of bureaucracy.
Ya, that's a joke to me.
Should take 2 months to roll this out, not 2 years.

Oh, come on. The bidding process will take two months and then they have to pick the stores that it'll go into and renovate them to purpose with cold storage. It's going to take at least six months no matter how you look at it.

I realize there are bits of it that are disappointing, but there's no point in exaggerating them.

Also, a truly paranoid person would have pointed out not that PC beer was going to come back, but that they rebranded nearly a year before this was announced. I think the grocers may have some plans in place.

sprague11 · Post by **sprague11** » Tue Apr 21, 2015 10:15 am

rejtable wrote:I think you are mixing up two things. The idea that a few (I think you have a different definition of "a lot" than I do) people bootleg from their garage doesn't mean that NB Liquor does or does not test.

I think I typed that out wrong. They certainly test. When I worked for the NB govt. I never got the impression that something being different on the label than the lab tests was as serious an issue as unaccounted for booze flowing into the province. Mind you this was over a decade ago.

chris_schryer · Post by **chris_schryer** » Tue Apr 21, 2015 12:57 pm

Belgian, there is a proposal that you can share profits across all licenses (so one store can go way over, as long as one is way under). And while Jordan already knows I disagree with his optimism on further changes, I disagree with his optimism on further changes. I cover it fully in my shiny new post (here: http://www.torontobeerblog.com/beer-new ... s-changes/) but we are looking at 12 YEARS before they reassess. It's take us over 30 for this minimal change. Nothing else will change, regardless of lobbying, for quite some time, unless we elects the PCs, and they blow everything open (including selling off the LCBO, God help us).

saints_gambit · Post by **saints_gambit** » Tue Apr 21, 2015 1:30 pm

chris_schryer wrote:Belgian, there is a proposal that you can share profits across all licenses (so one store can go way over, as long as one is way under). And while Jordan already knows I disagree with his optimism on further changes, I disagree with his optimism on further changes. I cover it fully in my shiny new post (here: http://www.torontobeerblog.com/beer-new ... s-changes/) but we are looking at 12 YEARS before they reassess. It's take us over 30 for this minimal change. Nothing else will change, regardless of lobbying, for quite some time, unless we elects the PCs, and they blow everything open (including selling off the LCBO, God help us).

You may well be right. However, the upside of giving up and not pushing the involved parties for further change for 12 years is nothing. The upside of optimistically suggesting simple reforms that can easily be lobbied for and that the public will agree with can be done through the AGCO or with political pressure and might produce something.

I'll put it this way: The current craft explosion started about 2008 and it has taken seven years to see change. If volumes double in the next two-three years, I'm going to bet some positions get re-evaluated.

Tapsucker · Post by **Tapsucker** » Tue Apr 21, 2015 9:45 pm

I'm wondering, what would the legality of something like an Uber for beer be?

Here is what I'm fishing at. We start a flat out boycott of TBS and LCBO and only buy beer from brewery stores. We build/source an app to let people to cooperate on their beer runs to make it happen.

As in, I'm headed to Bellwoods anyway, who in my neighbourhood would like me to pick up for them? People take turns and so on.

It might be far fetched, but I think it's time we find a way to vote with our dollars, but I don't want to dry up (no pun intended) business for our local brewers, just for the TBS and LCBO to show them our clout.

Thoughts?

midlife crisis · Post by **midlife crisis** » Wed Apr 22, 2015 2:04 pm

National Post editorial today sums up the disappointment with this quite well:

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comme ... u-to-drink

zane9 · Post by **zane9** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 9:47 pm

midlife crisis wrote:National Post editorial today sums up the disappointment with this quite well:

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comme ... u-to-drink

"Ontarians will thus be left with an even more absurd and needlessly complex system post-“reform” than before."

We're doomed.

Belgian · Post by **Belgian** » Thu Apr 23, 2015 10:27 pm

zane9 wrote:
midlife crisis wrote:National Post editorial today sums up the disappointment with this quite well:

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comme ... u-to-drink
"Ontarians will thus be left with an even more absurd and needlessly complex system post-“reform” than before."

We're doomed.

Kinda what I thought.

Yep our province can surely create the world's worst liquor system, not that it entirely lacks this reputation already. Too much potential for them to miss out on that.

Am I the only one who's thinking product availability will be screwed at some point (moreso?) Assuming human life still exists, and the stupid does not kill us.