Beer Blog - Sept Edition

Published on September 12, 2011

Your cooler may well be the hot spot in your store!

Alberta currently has around 900 different brands of beer available, compared to roughly 700 or so in Ontario. Note that’s “Brands” and not package sizes. (For example, Heineken gets counted once, not 8 times.)

This IS the Alberta Advantage.

This volume of product is available because the consumer in Alberta demands it. Are you listening to them? Take a look in your cooler. What do you carry? Don’t hear this as a suggestion to completely re-stock your cooler and experience overnight growth, but rather to begin stocking your cooler as you would your wine shelves. Improve your selection. Make thoughtful additions. Nurture the section. Look at what’s available, and talk to the reps. More importantly, talk to your customers. It isn’t hard to build a better beer section if you ask for recommendations. If you have a customer who wants to buy Aprikat from you, bring it in. Chances are, someone else will buy it too. Now look for the next addition!

One quick note: Beer is low margin, and high turn around. You’re not going to make as much on beer as you would wine, but you’ll see those customers a lot more often. What else can you do with a loyal, regular clientele? The customer who drinks better beer is interested in the other areas of your store. Think about that.

Each issue, we’ll take a quick look at a segment of the beer market. For now, why not start at home? You’re an independent, local business. You should be supporting other independent local businesses, and there’s no better place to start than with the Alberta Micro-breweries

Alley Kat, Amber’s, Big Rock, Grizzly Paw & Wildrose all have their products in CLS. At the very least, carry one of their products. Make sure your customers know that they’re local. Contact the brewery and see if it’s possible to get them to do an in-store tasting. Build from there. I cannot stress enough the need to support the local economy, and this is where you can start. There are precious few Alberta Producers in the Liquor Industry. It’s not hard to support them all, and frankly, it’s good business in the long term.

BEER BLOG, by Jim Pettinger, Sherbrooke Liquor