The Bar Towel

^ good ideas bakagaijin, in that beer-focused LCBO stores would streamline both the beers and the beer consumers to those stores, it looks more efficient for everyone and may better support the 'niche' beers that are expensive to ship (concentrate their distribution in a more cost-effective way.)

There are over 50 LCBO locations withing 35 kilometers of my house. Why are they mostly all the same?!?

I think they'd like most of us to buy the same high-volume product, it's their economic self-interest by the look of it - less variety expected by us, better wholesale deals for them, and much bigger profit margin with less effort. Of course this profit machine may also be subsidizing the $3.65 Rochefort 10 we fringe consumers pay a bargain price for up here... yes?

Belgian wrote:^ good ideas bakagaijin, in that beer-focused LCBO stores would streamline both the beers and the beer consumers to those stores, it looks more efficient for everyone and may better support the 'niche' beers that are expensive to ship (concentrate their distribution in a more cost-effective way.)

There are over 50 LCBO locations withing 35 kilometers of my house. Why are they mostly all the same?!?

I think they'd like most of us to buy the same high-volume product, it's their economic self-interest by the look of it - less variety expected by us, better wholesale deals for them, and much bigger profit margin with less effort. Of course this profit machine may also be subsidizing the $3.65 Rochefort 10 we fringe consumers pay a bargain price for up here... yes?

The LCBO charges a standard % markup. Their wholesale deals actually hurt their profit margins.

^ right Squeaky I've heard sometimes the LC tells a supplier its price is too low, and insist on paying a higher price for the wholesale goods
(the LC have a pre-set minimum for their buying prices which they want to mark up a rigid percentage to a target final price.)

It all makes sense now, and I think I've just gone cross-eyed...

The LCBO charges a standard % markup. Their wholesale deals actually hurt their profit margins.

... but I wonder if it matters when they lose some profit margins on large wholesale buys because A) it's still less work for them, and B) whatever the percent profit is they get 100 percent of the market which works out just fine.

Again, a reason to keep most of the LCBO stores really simple and near identical, makes running them brainlessly easy (and perhaps spares other costs.)

Belgian wrote:^ good ideas bakagaijin, in that beer-focused LCBO stores would streamline both the beers and the beer consumers to those stores, it looks more efficient for everyone and may better support the 'niche' beers that are expensive to ship (concentrate their distribution in a more cost-effective way.)

There are over 50 LCBO locations withing 35 kilometers of my house. Why are they mostly all the same?!?

I think they'd like most of us to buy the same high-volume product, it's their economic self-interest by the look of it - less variety expected by us, better wholesale deals for them, and much bigger profit margin with less effort. Of course this profit machine may also be subsidizing the $3.65 Rochefort 10 we fringe consumers pay a bargain price for up here... yes?

The retail price for all products is calculated by applying the LCBO standard pricing formulas to the wholesale purchase price (quoted by the supplier in writing at the time of submission). This info and a whole bunch of interesting info on how the LCBO is run can be found in this document:

http://www.doingbusinesswithlcbo.com/tr ... /16/zoomed

The Rochefort 10 price is what is agreed upon when the supplier/agent submits their application for purchase of the product (with the application of the formula). The agent can submit a price of $5.00 per bottle to the LCBO and the LCBO can go tell them to go #*%@ themselves.

The LCBO issues product needs letters on a somewhat limited basis. They might say they want stouts for a Fall release. If an supplier/agent tries to submit a product with too high of a price I assume that they run the risk of the LCBO turning them down. They might not have a chance to submit their product for listing again for another year when the LCBO asks for stouts in the Fall.

Belgian wrote:^ right Squeaky I've heard sometimes the LC tells a supplier its price is too low, and insist on paying a higher price for the wholesale goods
(the LC have a pre-set minimum for their buying prices which they want to mark up a rigid percentage to a target final price.)

It all makes sense now, and I think I've just gone cross-eyed...

The LCBO charges a standard % markup. Their wholesale deals actually hurt their profit margins.

... but I wonder if it matters when they lose some profit margins on large wholesale buys because A) it's still less work for them, and B) whatever the percent profit is they get 100 percent of the market which works out just fine.

Again, a reason to keep most of the LCBO stores really simple and near identical, makes running them brainlessly easy (and perhaps spares other costs.)

If memory serves they got busted asking suppliers for higher prices a while back, not because they wanted more out of the markup, but because they wanted to flesh out their selection in terms of low, medium and high priced items. Which is just a slightly different kind of stupid, I guess.

Also, upon a little reflection I might be wrong about their markups when applied to beer. They charge a beer markup per volume, not a % based on price. So low cost beer should make them more money. They also charge much higher (~3x) markups on high-volume brewers, which I suppose is good and bad. It's good that they're charging us less for craft beer, but it does give them an incentive to sell more macro beer.

squeaky wrote:... Also, upon a little reflection I might be wrong about their markups when applied to beer. They charge a beer markup per volume, not a % based on price. So low cost beer should make them more money. They also charge much higher (~3x) markups on high-volume brewers, which I suppose is good and bad. It's good that they're charging us less for craft beer, but it does give them an incentive to sell more macro beer.

Wow so the higher the intrinsic value of a beer, the better price per volume we get (duh, I think I inferred this ten years ago. )

This kind of explains the fleeting nature of ultra-premium seasonals that we get (arguably) for a decent to excellent price, and then they're gone and we rarely or never see them again... ok sometimes they sell too well for the Board to completely ignore tham and we see the return of Roche 10 and Saison Dupont, despite the small sales volume and lower % unit yield. Rochefort 8 sold blindingly fast in 2005, and only in 2013 did they bother adding it to the General List (AKA we're so afriad to be over SKU'd let's carry less good beer than an American Wegman's store.)

I'd like to think the surge of support for craft & exotic beer - and every one of you, and forums & events - is responsible for waking the sleeping giant that controls much of our beer selection.

Hey guys not sure if anyone posted this already but you can also get inventory of beer through searching for it on the Vintages site at www.vintages.com and it seems to be accurate (as much as the lcbo can be ) just like the old one
Cheers

I just noticed they've got a "search all stores" option now. About time.

Does that bring the new LCBO.com in line functionally with what we had with the old site at http://foodanddrink.ca/lcbo-ear/jsp/Pro ... anguage=EN ? I mean obviously it would be better if we got actual inventory counts in real time like pretty much any modern inventory system would do, but sometimes you have to count small blessings.

The developer in me is amused that the "new" link actually just links to the old foodanddrink url. It took them like 8 months to do that.

Craig wrote:I just noticed they've got a "search all stores" option now. About time.

Does that bring the new LCBO.com in line functionally with what we had with the old site at http://foodanddrink.ca/lcbo-ear/jsp/Pro ... anguage=EN ? I mean obviously it would be better if we got actual inventory counts in real time like pretty much any modern inventory system would do, but sometimes you have to count small blessings.

The developer in me is amused that the "new" link actually just links to the old foodanddrink url. It took them like 8 months to do that.

The 'check all stores' option brings up a fixed-size window with data sorted by quantity. You can't sort the other columns like you can in the old search on foodanddrink.

Absolutely incredible - in a negative way.

This thread was started close to five years ago when the 'new' lcbo.com site was launched. It wasn't very good at first, as the complaints in this thread show.

One of the big issues, especially for me, was the lack of a "search all stores" option. Because of that, I used to use foodanddrink.ca all the time.

Eventually they added this option to lcbo.com, and I slowly migrated over until that became the site I used regularly.

Well, sometime in the last few days, they have updated the site and taken this option away again. For me, it worked great, and it is completely beyond my understanding why they would remove something that has been there for about 4 years now.

I complained to helloLCBO about this. Their first answer told me first, how to search for "nearby stores" (not what I was talking about), and second, that I could do a "search all stores" on vintages.com

I replied back and politely said 'thank you' (after all, the people answering me aren't the ones making the stupid decisions), and also said "But I am still curious why such a good tool would be removed from your main site. It does not make sense to me."

To that, I was told "We do apologize, there are no plans at this time for the "Check All Stores" option to be reinstated. Your feedback in regards to the usefulness of the feature again has been forwarded to the appropriate department for their review."

Sigh. Cry. Bang my head against the wall.

S. St. Jeb wrote:This thread was started close to five years ago when the 'new' lcbo.com site was launched. It wasn't very good at first, as the complaints in this thread show.

One of the big issues, especially for me, was the lack of a "search all stores" option. Because of that, I used to use foodanddrink.ca all the time.

Eventually they added this option to lcbo.com, and I slowly migrated over until that became the site I used regularly.

Well, sometime in the last few days, they have updated the site and taken this option away again. For me, it worked great, and it is completely beyond my understanding why they would remove something that has been there for about 4 years now.

I complained to helloLCBO about this. Their first answer told me first, how to search for "nearby stores" (not what I was talking about), and second, that I could do a "search all stores" on vintages.com

I replied back and politely said 'thank you' (after all, the people answering me aren't the ones making the stupid decisions), and also said "But I am still curious why such a good tool would be removed from your main site. It does not make sense to me."

To that, I was told "We do apologize, there are no plans at this time for the "Check All Stores" option to be reinstated. Your feedback in regards to the usefulness of the feature again has been forwarded to the appropriate department for their review."

Sigh. Cry. Bang my head against the wall.

If you're searching for beer, you could try the project that I'm working on: http://www.caskhunter.com

It's basically a ripoff of drinkvine. It shows inventory for all stores, but for now it's limited to just beer. I plan to expand it to all products, but I want to make sure it's stable with a smaller set of data first. It's brand new, so it's buggy.

It concerns me that lcbo.com has removed the "search all stores" option. It may be a matter of time before they make scrapers like mine impossible...

Derek

It is still somewhat available. When you click on “buy in store” then select your local store, you can then click on “check nearby stores” which shows you the nearest 5 stores that have the item in stock, then the next 5 etc.

The iOS app has a similar feature that shows the nearest 10 stores.

DerekD wrote:If you're searching for beer, you could try the project that I'm working on: http://www.caskhunter.com

It concerns me that lcbo.com has removed the "search all stores" option. It may be a matter of time before they make scrapers like mine impossible...

Derek

Thanks, I'll take a look sometime. As I said in my original post, I just can't imagine why they would remove the feature.

GtownRandy wrote:It is still somewhat available. When you click on “buy in store” then select your local store, you can then click on “check nearby stores” which shows you the nearest 5 stores that have the item in stock, then the next 5 etc.

Yes, I know, but this is not at all the same as 'search all stores'. If I am interested in a particular beer, and it is only available in places far from where I live, I want to be able to easily see that. I can then plan beer shopping when I travel.

JaseWescott wrote:

SirBeatington wrote:Hey all, first time caller, long time listener.
Jumped on LCBO.com this morning, and the “Check All Stores” is back. Not only that, but now you can organize by Quantity or by City!
Either someone at the ‘BO grew a brain, or a lot of people complained.
I would bet on the latter.

aye https://hellolcbo.com/app/answers/detai ... 65/kw/2019

2019 Summer Beer List isn't ready yet. I reached out yesterday.

When I complained in February about the loss of the 'search all stores' feature, I was told "We do apologize, there are no plans at this time for the "Check All Stores" option to be reinstated. Your feedback in regards to the usefulness of the feature again has been forwarded to the appropriate department for their review."