I still disagree with the premise. For one, you're declaring that the chicken came before the egg. Or, to be more precise, that the supply is driving the demand. Not always, but most of the time in an open market, it's the other way around. If there was high demand, more groceries would be stocking more diverse (both as a quantitative and comparative statement) beers.
If you want to argue that the availability of Bud and Miller in groceries potentially keeps stores from giving shelf space to craft beers, you could have a case. But not likely on the demand side. On the supply side. As in slotting fees. They go on in the rest of the store like crazy. (Granted, it may be illegal when it comes to alcoholic beverages to pay grocers for shelf placement, unlike bread or cereal. I don't pretendto be remotely familiar with the rules in this area.)
You could *maybe* argue that the widespread availability of "common" beers limits the exposure of better beers, but IMO you've done nothing to demonstrate that there's a case to be made for diminished demand.
I had no problem finding those in Indiana, Illinois or California, three states in which booze in all forms is available in pretty much every grocery and drug store.
That doesn't mean that my anecdotal evidence trumps your anecdotal evidence. It just means that you really need to come up with more than anecdotal evidence to support your speculation.
It really is far more dependent, IMO, on other factors, such as population density, demographics, income levels, etc. Cities where there's a sufficient market for such diversity and quality will almost inevitably have someone jump in to supply the demand. As I mentioned, I've seen plenty of high-quality, diverse, specialty stores selling not only fine beer, but selling fine wine or fine whisk(e)y or fine everything in states where you can walk into any grocery and get a beer. Granted, two of my three examples I can point to as having had plenty of experience with - LA and Chicago - are two of the three largest cities in the country. But it was also the case in Indianapolis, which as a whole did not have diversity in food and drink as one of its strong points when I lived there. And yet I had no problem finding several stores with plenty of selection. Conversely, Minneapolis is in a state where there is no grocery sales of beer, and I would say on a per-capita basis, Minneapolis was really not appreciably better than Indy when it came to the number of stores of the type you describe.
Well, first of all, San Diego is not hot. Not remotely. It's spectacularly mild.
Secondly, there are a lot of cultural and legal reasons that would make the South much less likely to have both diversity in beer and ready availability of that diversity. Several southern states have quite restrictive laws when it comes to selling beer. At least one or two didn't even allow brewing within their borders until the last few years. The legal climate is just not as friendly, in general.
Add in that the South is not only the most religious region in the country, but the dominant religious expression (Southern Baptist and other forms of evangelicalism and fundamentalism) is one that teaches that alcohol is bad and should not be consumed, plus an overall conservative culture that is slow to change and adopt new things, and you have plenty of potential hurdles to the widespread availability of a wide range of beer that are much more plausible than alleged diminishment of demand by making something too available.
-Steve