Vote: Will you buy your beer at Walmart?
Though the news of Walmart adding more craft beer in the future is probably music to the ears of craft breweries everywhere, local liquor stores may feel differently.
So, here’s the magic question…
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I’d rather support the local bottle shops and breweries.
I’d be worried that walmart will try to push the breweries and/or distributors to keep dropping their prices at the expense of quality like the do for other products. Also, you can bet that they won’t care how long time-sensitive products (like IPAs) will sit on their shelves.
I’ve got a lot of good choices for craft beer — one place within a mile’s walk, and two others with excellent selection and helpful, friendly staff always eager to help me out. So I’m glad Walmart is going to expand their selection, and I hope a lot more people get access to better beer that way. But I’m really not going to start shopping there just for that.
I’d rather not drink beer at all.
It depends on what they stock, where I am, and what I can find elsewhere. If they start stocking hard to find items, or I am traveling, I would absolutely go there. On my home turf? a cold day in hell.
i won’t go out of my way to find a wal-mart for cheaper beer. but if i happen to be there, i’ll stock up on beer i would normally buy that costs me more elsewhere.
remember when there was a hop shortage and the price of beer went up? and remember when gas was almost $5/gallon and the price of beer went up? well, hops have come back. and gas is cheaper. but the price of beer never came back down.
then people started putting beer in cans. cans are cheaper than bottles, but the prices of canned beer don’t seem to be much cheaper than their six-pack counterparts (IPAs and such).
i buy Lagunitas IPA at Costco when they have it – it’s only about $25 for a case. compare that to Bev Mo, which is $8.99/six pack. compare that to a corner store where it’s usually around $9.99 or more.
just saying, i spend a lot of money on beer. if i can save a couple bucks while shopping, i’ll do it.
Just remember even though I will not nor will most people who visit this site or call themselves Craft Beer Enthusiasts buy beer at Wal-Mart, we are a very small percentage of society. Craft Beer accounts for less than 6% of total beer sales and the majority is being consumed and purchased by an even smaller percentage. What Wal-Mart will achieve by offering more Craft Beer is expand the Craft Beer consumer and awareness on Craft Beer in the form of extra sales and increased visibility. Whether I or you agree or like this, it is coming and overall majority of all Craft Brewers are embracing this. After all they are small business trying to survive in a daunting economy.
Adding craft beer will not be enough for me to shop at Walmart, they kill jobs and are bad for the economy.
I buy beer at one of two places: my local grocery store because I want them to continue carrying and improving on their selection of craft beers; and Total Wine (a huge beer, wine and spirits supermarket-sized store that I call mecca) because they were the first in the area to supply craft beer. Buying craft beer from Walmart jeopardizes these businesses.
Plus, I don’t like what Walmart might do to the distributors/wholesalers in order to do business with Walmart. Walmart flexes muscle and throws their weight on suppliers to do what Walmart wants them to do in order to get their product on the shelves (e.g., purchase expensive inventory software, provide in-store inventory level management, etc…) and that could break many distributor’s backs.
I shop for my groceries at Walmart 50%-60% of the time, but won’t buy my beer from them.
There are bottle shops closer to me that would have a vastly superior selection (rare, limited, one-off brews) then any Walmart could have. I guess if I am in a place completely unknown to me, Walmart would be an option but that would happen rarely.
Oh and this is the real beernews dave 😉
Even though it’s unlikely that I will buy my beer from them, I still think it’s a great move for the craft beer industry. Craft bottle shops aren’t going away anytime, but seeing craft beers with a greater presence in places they didn’t use to exist (Wal-mart, grocery stores, stadiums) is a sign of sustainable growth.
Seeing as the majority say they would not, I hope wal mart starts carrying cantillon so i can buy it all at lower prices
If I can save money, i’ll buy craft beer from Walmart. For those who say they would pay more to support local bottle shops…go right ahead. I’ll save my money thank you.
What’s Walmart?
Wal Mart kills America. F that place.
I work for a distributor and deal with Wal-Mart all the time and they have such a tight relationship with ABI that even if they do bring in craft beers, they are really doing it for a hidden agenda you aren’t hearing about. ABI would never allow them to take a piece of their 70%+ share of space they have in Wal-Mart’s unless they were going to benefit somehow. How about Wal-Mart kills local stores and even small regional/chain stores, how about ABI would love to see only Super stores left in the world, or that they would love to see the only growing part of the beer industry (craft beers) be gone forever. Ask yourself this question……If Wal-Mart continues to put all the small guys out of business or buys up the majority of the small chain stores that carry a great selection, do you really think they would keep those craft beers in their stores! Why would they! They get kickbacks among a lot of other things from ABI and they let ABI control all of their coolers (planograms). Wal-Mart is a muscle flexing company that the small craft brewers would just not be able to put up with and they would either be forced to remove their products or try to stay in business dealing with Wal-Mart’s rules, which a lot of companies went into bankruptcy for trying to stay with Wal-Mart because they felt they had no other choice. For any of you who want to learn a little more about what Wal-Mart is really about try to find the documentry about them, I believe it is called “the high cost of low prices” although I think there are a few documentries about them now. That will open your eyes to there evils and maybe change your mind about small companies doing business with them.
P.S. Sorry for my rant, I just can’t stand what Wal-Mart is doing to our country and small business people, especially with what I see on the inside in doing business with them.
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F Walmart.
How Manny cases can one person buy a walmart that’s anyone knows