The Bar Towel

The Hunt Club one is definitely the better overall store for beer than Innis. The Innis guy manages to get pretty much everything eventually, but Hunt Club has been better at accessing the harder to get stuff quicker.

The LCBO site hasn't updated inventory in 3 days. Grrrrrrrr.

the LCBO's turning their Danforth and Broadview location into a pilot location for ethnic-focused wine.
it will have more Greek wine SKUs.

Portugal's the next featured country.

hopefully Toronto's Belgian community will be recognized.

atomeyes wrote:the LCBO's turning their Danforth and Broadview location into a pilot location for ethnic-focused wine.
it will have more Greek wine SKUs.

.

Hopefully that means that their beer selection doesn't get any worse! (I'm not so happy with the current selection there ... but that is true of most LCBOs too )

Chris wrote:

atomeyes wrote:the LCBO's turning their Danforth and Broadview location into a pilot location for ethnic-focused wine.
it will have more Greek wine SKUs.

.

Hopefully that means that their beer selection doesn't get any worse! (I'm not so happy with the current selection there ... but that is true of most LCBOs too )

that location sucks for many, many reasons.
all the spirits in the window getting hit with direct sunlight. ugggg....
beer selection sucks.
IF i have to hit an LCBO, it's Laird.

atomeyes wrote:that location sucks for many, many reasons.
all the spirits in the window getting hit with direct sunlight. ugggg....
beer selection sucks.
IF i have to hit an LCBO, it's Laird.

Vic Park and Ellesmere is pretty good too. A bit further from you, but they usually keep stock on new releases longer than Laird.

I really miss the lcbo brewery features.

Wonder if they will ever bring them back.

I seem to recall being told, way back when, that these were being discontinued.

Too much bitchin' from customers and stores about allocation.

Why that store or town or why do we have to take it or why cant we order it......and so on .......

I for one hope they never do that feature again.

spinrsx wrote:I really miss the lcbo brewery features.

Wonder if they will ever bring them back.

Almost certainly not. They say it's "on hiatus for now" but the person who initiated the project is no longer with the LCBO and they apparently didn't do as well as they hoped.

Ukie wrote:I seem to recall being told, way back when, that these were being discontinued.

Too much bitchin' from customers and stores about allocation.

Why that store or town or why do we have to take it or why cant we order it......and so on ...

So in a nutshell, if a good marketing idea - the Brewery Feature - doesn't conveniently fit into the LCBOs awkward and poorly-coordinated massive province-wide system, our LC friends will sh-t-can the entire idea for good instead of proactively implementing the idea in a far better way to serve the consumer [their first obligation is after all 'to provide (us) a quality service.']

^ However the LCBO can't be wrong in how it does things (do they ever really admit their flaws?) so I guess that main overriding factor determines what consumers can or cannot have here from their big booze-tax dollars. In effect, they get to tell US what 'a quality service' consists of, while writing themselves glowing annual reports of their paragon virtues & how they really killed it in the alcohol market.

This must really suck for breweries that would otherwise flourish in privately-managed beer and liquor stores that could 'feature' Brewers. Plus the momentum of these scattered LCBO features never got going, it would take years of ongoing efforts and improvements, especially to bring Ontario out of the dark ages we have been stuck in so long. It seems none of this momentum and the sad backwardness of our province was taken into account, and calculated for in a long-term plan?

Imagine if they had brought out to the vintages wine program just for a year or two on very shaky planning and then got impatient and canceled it out of sheer nearsigtedness. Such a missed opportunity you can imagine. There had damn well better be another way great breweries can build a market here!

Exactly, the features were never dealt with properly. Beer was mixed in with everything else on the shelf.

If was put on an end with distinct marketing about the brewery and the specific offerings in the feature it would have been so much better. It would generate information and a "buzz" about the brewery.

Instead a crappy roll out and really no real distinction in product placement on the shelves kills a pretty good idea.

cfrancis wrote:Exactly, the features were never dealt with properly. Beer was mixed in with everything else on the shelf.

If was put on an end with distinct marketing about the brewery and the specific offerings in the feature it would have been so much better. It would generate information and a "buzz" about the brewery.

Instead a crappy roll out and really no real distinction in product placement on the shelves kills a pretty good idea.

Great idea, poorly executed. Now where's that god damned Orval?

Anyone else calling complete bullshit on the LCBO's tale that the Sierra Nevada was actually bottled in March, and not Best Before March despite that the bottle clearly says best before March?

Blasphomet wrote:Anyone else calling complete bullshit on the LCBO's tale that the Sierra Nevada was actually bottled in March, and not Best Before March despite that the bottle clearly says best before March?

Nope. Sierra Nevada released a statement saying it was an error if I remember correctly.

Blasphomet wrote:Anyone else calling complete bullshit on the LCBO's tale that the Sierra Nevada was actually bottled in March, and not Best Before March despite that the bottle clearly says best before March?

No, because I saw them bottling the second order when I visited in late April. It was bottled in March.