Beer/booze in grocery stores?

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · 2005-10-06T16:23:45+00:00

Question stirred up by the "Sunday in Pa." thread below:I recently had the opportunity to ramble through, and spend time in, several states that allow grocery sales of beer and wine. Among them: North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Arizona. I contrasted the markets with those of my native state (Pennsylvania--see "Sunday" thread if you're unfamiliar), Maryland (booze only in booze stores, not run by the states--although Montgomery County controls all booze in the county), DC (ditto), and Virginia (booze available in grocery stores, but booze stores have the real selections)Double hypothesis formed from days of intensive booze shopping:Booze in grocery stores is a good thing in general if you like booze, because it "normalizes" the presence of booze, makes it a perfectly normal foodstuff (albeit still regulated), and removes the "stigma" or "forbidden-fruit" aspect of having to make a special side trip.However, grocery store sales are *bad* for craft beers. Because of the distribution requirements, it appears that grocery chains only want to hear from a beer maker if they can provide it routinely by the trailer-load, not the van-load. Furthermore, the presence of booze in grocery stores means that people are acclimated to go only there for the sake of convenience, and most likely NOT seek out the (rarer as a result) fine-wine/beer shop. Thus, it's harder for a craft beer to get noticed and bought.I spent three days all over Miami hitting brewpubs and cruising for decent booze at retail (with notes and hints from others helping me). The best I could blunder across was a Liefmanns Framboise. I'm sure I must have missed Miami's best excuse for beer shopping, but even in Maryland and Pennsylvania I can run across better selections by random luck in the cities than what I found.What are the experiences of others?

S

Steve Jackson 20 years ago

Maybe we are lucky here. It's not that the snob grocers are going to rival any of the good beer stores around here; I don't want to cast them as beer paradise. But they do a reasonably good job of carrying at least some interesting and diverse things. I just went to Bristol Farms today (to buy an organic chicken, another example of something not easily found at the normal Ralph's or Von's, and something that I would not argue whose demand is diminished because you can find chicken everywhere), and there were beers like Chimay, Duvel, Bear Republic, Stone, AleSmith, a smaller San Diego brewery whose name escapes me, Full Sail, Karl Strauss, Shipyard, Lagunitas, etc. etc. It's not nearly the selection I could get at the Wine Country less than 5 minutes down the street, but it doesn't suck, either.

That actually doesn't sound all that different from what I've seen in SoCal. We get BevMo too, which is offensive in its inoffensiveness, as well its ability to have 10 rows of beer, and next to zero unique or interesting bottles in all of those aisles. The primary source here for good bottle beer are stores that make their name in wine, who devote attention to beer and treat it pretty well, too.

But, that said, that's the way it's been everywhere I've lived. Best beer selection in Minneapolis? Surdyk's, which is known primarily for wine. In Indy? Khan's Fine Wines. Chicago? Sam's Wine & Spirits, and Binny's, which is also a store known largely for wine (and probably for whisk(e)y before beer). SoCal? At least for the parts of town I've been around, it's again wine stores: Hi-Times Wine, the Wine Country, Morry's of Naples (which is losing beer shelf space in favor of more wine, which is already the lion's share of their business).

In fact, outside of Pennsylvania (and thanks to their quirky beer laws), I can't think of any store that is primarily a beer store, anywhere. At least in the States. Maybe it is different in Oregon and Colorado. (Oh, duh, Belmont Station in Portland. There's a successful beer-focused store.)

Now that wouldn't surprise me at all. Sounds about right for the Bay Area. And the wine emphasis seems even more logical up there, what with Napa and Sonoma just up the street.

-Steve

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dgs 20 years ago

Also, Liquid Solutions in the 'burbs (Tyegurd! :-O) and up in humble li'l ol' Seattle WA, Bottleworks, and the Bottle Shop in Bellingham. Both OR and WA are "control" states, though; the likes of a BevMo or Sam's or Binny's (or Martin's in NOLA ... RIP?) simply don't exist up here, since private retailers can't sell hooch.

There's also an interesting little place in Renton (Seattle suburb, home of Boeing 737s and other stuff), the Red House; it's a wine shop, GoodBeer shop, and tapas restaurant. Nice place with regular tasting sessions. You can select any beer from the cooler and pay a corkage or "cappage" fee on top of the retail price, to enjoy with the house eats. Or you can order from the small (but well-chosen) selection of beers on tap. Anything like this elsewhere in the country?

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dgs 20 years ago

I regularly visit a specialty beer shop that sells nothing but good beer, and it has not so much as a speck of Bud, Miller, or Coors on the premises. The only concession to popular taste is PBR, and that's as more of a novelty item than anything else. It *is* possible.

IIRC, Belmont Station and Liquid Solutions in Oregon operate the same way. The margins on industrolager and the need to stock it chilled in mass quantities for quick turnover are more suited to supermarkets and convenience stores than to these specialist shops.

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nrichter 20 years ago

Montana cities {Bozeman, Missoula, Billings, Great Falls} have a great micro-brew selection, even at most grocery stores. Pretty big micro-brew culture here.

No wierd laws for the most part. Oct 1 of this year MT finally enacted an open container law (last state in the union to do it), before then it was legal outside of cities to drink while driving down the road.. you just couldn't be drunk.

The only wierd law is the 'Brewpub' law. Back in 1998 the MT Tavern Association & the beer/wine distributors pushed through a law that required new brew-on-premise places to close at 8:00am.

So basically running a brew-pub here is not easy. There was one in Bozeman that did great.. but the idiots moved and lost their grandfathered status (so they couldn't brew on site in the new location). They also moved right next to their biggest competitors location (about 50 draft beers) and basically went out of business.

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