The Bar Towel

I trudged all the way down to Spadina/Dundas (the only LCBO remotely near me offering the Stouts promotion) to find the shelf empty of Sam's Oatmeal stout.... blast it!

Has anybody seen this stuff recently, and where? Who would part with a bottle, and for what price? ...

I wouldn't swear to it, but I'm pretty sure that I saw some on the shelf at the Atrium on Bay location (Yonge & Dundas) on the weekend.

The Manulife Centre location also participates in the seasonal promotions.

Try calling both those locations and see what they've got.


Greg

Call the LCBO Infoline at 416-365-5900 during business hours and speak to an Information Officer...tell them you're looking for product # 407981 and they can track it down anywhere in the province...pity that this service is not available online as it is in Quebec but the LCBO's only the largest retailer of alcohol in the world so you can't expect them to have a decent website...there are still decent quantities of SS Oatmeal available but, I'll be honest, we're rounding up as much as we can for various bars around the city so you'd better move quickly.

That's a good point, Peter. I am definitely a fan of the SAQ online product tracking system. Helps me from wasting time looking for the few beers the SAQ still carries. I was at Davisville last night and while they normally are as well-stocked as any store, they didn't have the Sam Smith's nor the Burton...where do I find these? It would definitely be nice to check online.

The Infoline is the best way to go, but as some of you may know the LCBO web site has an extremely clunky and iffy method for finding a product.

The steps are outlined in the Product Browse section, and it's actually a hilarious bit of application design.

The poor visitor is first invited to find the n LCBO stores of his or her choosing from an address also of his or her choosing.

Then the visitor must select one of the stores as the target store.

Then when browsing the products, an indication of whether that store has the product is presented.

I doubt any of this is tied into their inventory system - I'm assuming they have one! - so in the end all bets are off.

Depending on how you go about filling out the screens, you can get some wild results, like the beer you're looking for is in Thunder Bay, even though that was not in the region that you selected.

And, to top it all off, your selection is not remembered the next time you visit the site (at least not with my browser), and you're forced to go through the whole lovely process all over again.

Of course, the poor LCBO only makes close to $1 billion in profit each year. Effective web sites cost money, any any drain on the bottom line would affect the LCBO's ability to convince Ernie Eves that the LCBO cash cow must remain in place.

Again, everyone's best bet is the Infoline although even they are sometimes out to lunch. They can search either by product number or name and their information is somewhat accurate as of the previous Saturday. Always take the store telephone number and call the store first and ask the store to physically check the stock, especially if the quantity is small. Unfortunately, you'll run into store people who don't want to check stock and will simply punch it into their computer and tell you what the computer says but often that's not accurate. I won't drive out of my way unless they physically check the stock and you can insist that they do. As of this past Saturday my information indicates that there are almost 1900 bottles of SS Oatmeal out there somewhere so you should be able to find some. As for their website...forget it...a complete joke and utter waste of time. Even such features as searching for what products are listed are frought with problems...when you go product categories you would think that you would pick "Beer" to find beer...well, it'll find some beers for you but not all...you have to be clairvoyant and know that if you scroll further down the list of product categories you'll find things like "OOP Beer" (English translation "out of province beer"), U.S. Beer and Non-U.S. Beer. First time I tried to search to see what Belgian beers are listed I found none. Knowing that I sell Duvel and Chimay at the LCBO, I e-mailed the website people who informed me that I should have searched under Non-U.S. Beer...oh dopey me! This categories have nothing to do with making things easy for the consumer but are the LCBO's internal product categories even though to the consumer they're nonsensical. The website is an embarassment and I've written numerous e-mails over the past few years to which the response is always "thank you and we're working on improving the site"...yeah, right!

I know there is some still in Hamilton at the Dundurn location, which, incidently, was closed today because of a huge flood in the area. 40,000,000+ L of water spewing into the streets from a broken pipe. Hugely chaotic for our fair city. Anyway, maybe they'll have a flood sale.

Cheers, Joe.

PS I was not affected by the flood (thanks for asking) other my shower was plagued with low water pressure this morning.

Thank you everyone...

Someone back home found some (in Kingston) and I have a few bottles of Sammy's waiting for me ... now I must hold out until reading week.

I've found Sam Smith's Oatmeal Stout in 3 liquor stores in Mississauga. They are Mavis and Dundas, Lakeshore Rd in Port Credit and Hwy 10 and Eglinton

The BURTON PORTER - Josh spoke of earlier in this thread - is fast running out.

Best thing to do if you cannot find it in your routine LCBO visit is to drop me a line at paul@greatdrinks.com to tell me what part of the city - or province - you'd like to find it in and we can look it up in our store inventory system to direct you as best possible.

As Peter has said elsewhere, however, it is just as good - if not better sometimes (a little more up to date sometimes) - to call the LCBO's Infoline directly. If you give them the CSPC (Burton Porter 500ml CSPC = 926162) and your rough location they, too, can help you find some.

If you would like us to make that call for you, no problem. Again, drop me a line at paul@greatdrinks.com for anything you need.

Thanks for the business.

Cheers, Paul

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Rubaiyat on 2003-02-19 22:19 ]</font>