Am I remembering correctly...?

[BeerIsGood]

As I've mentioned previously, until recently I was out of the country for five years. While I notice a far wider array of Ontario beers, it seems to me that the diversity of beer from elsewhere (particularly Europe) has decreased correspondingly, at least in my local LCBO. Is my impression accurate, or has five years clouded my recall?

[S. St. Jeb]

Haven't really thought of it from that angle. My gut feeling is 'no'. The significantly wider selection of Ontario craft beer compared to five years ago would make the same number of European beers a smaller proportion of the total selection, and could therefore make it appear that there is less. But I really couldn't say about diversity of the European selection.

[sofakingdrunk]

My nearest lcbo still has an absolute fuckload of euro lager selection

[Belgian]

The Euro-Lager selection hasn't improved either. We used to have Okocim Pils and Porter long ago. You think that by now we'd have more cool German and Slavic lagers. Andechser, Augustiner, Weltenburger-type quality level. One might fear this humble, traditional bready-beer goodness has been supplanted by single-hop New Zealand pale ales selling for seven dollars.

[seangm]

I'd agree that it's probably a relative thing with the increase in Ontario made options, but there are definitely some Euro beers that haven't made an appearance in years. Weihenstephaner dunkel is a notable one in my books; German dunkelweizens in general are increasingly hard to find apart from Erdinger's. O'Hara's Irish Stout hasn't been around for a while either, finding a non-Guinness stout from overseas is pretty difficult as well. We need less mass-produced Euro lagers, but I suppose that's what sells best.

[Belgian]

It's a perpetual game. The worker-focused LCBO doesn't like adding SKUs without subtracting other ones. It terrifies them, the very notion of expanding our selection into the kind of Byzantine options common to our USA neighbors, and being very consumer-focused. So, to keep the SKUs at a certain number provincially (because we are all the same!) the LCBO nuke perfectly valid listings for 'politically justified' reasons (such as claiming limited demand, despite their obligation to cater to it.)



Of course when robots are scanning and stocking all the bottles, this factor of greater SKUs won't infringe on their free time at work.

[darmokandjalad]

It's a perpetual game. The worker-focused LCBO doesn't like adding SKUs without subtracting other ones. It terrifies them, the very notion of expanding our selection into the kind of Byzantine options common to our USA neighbors, and being very consumer-focused. So, to keep the SKUs at a certain number provincially (because we are all the same!) the LCBO nuke perfectly valid listings for 'politically justified' reasons (such as claiming limited demand, despite their obligation to cater to it.)

(image clipped)

Of course when robots are scanning and stocking all the bottles, this factor of greater SKUs won't infringe on their free time at work.

That row of ciders in the foreground directly underneath the "Craft Beer" signage is triggering my OCD something fierce

Also, I am not in favour of giving robots any free time at work whatsoever. They will most likely use it to plan to kill all humans.