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Walmart’s New Beer Focus

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You probably saw the news over the past year that Walmart was going to be focusing to a greater degree on the sale of beer in their stores. Advertising Age had an interest glimpse into their plans, entitled How Walmart Plans to Double Beer Sales In Three Years . At the recent NBWA annual convention in Las vegas last week, Walmart’s Chief Merchandising and Marketing Officer, Duncan MacNaughton, said he was “pleased but not satisfied” with their progress so far, adding that he feels Walmart is “still ‘under-shared’ in beer sales compared with competitors.”

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Does this Walmart beer display give some indication of their strategy to sell beer?

Apparently there’s currently an uneasy relationship with Walmart and beer wholesalers, which should surprise no one. Walmart is so big they’re used to getting their way and dictating whatever they want — some might say bullying — even if what they’re asking for is unreasonable or even not entirely on the same terms as everybody else enjoys.

Because they use “just-in-time” ordering systems, “their backrooms have no storage,” David Black, CEO of Northeast Sales Distributing, said in an interview. His company’s territory includes some 50 Walmarts in portions of Georgia and North Carolina. “They refuse the order or they make you sit there for three hours while they take something else.”

That’s something most, if not all, of the big chains do, of course, but Walmart has supposedly raised it to a fine art. Walmart also told the assembled beer distributors that they’re not considering a private label beer, which from their point of view is good news.

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A battleship of Walmart beer sales.

Curiously, MacNaughton also said this. “We don’t want cute displays. We want ‘shoppable’ displays: item and price and can I get a case off the top. Sometimes we kid ourselves with pretty. Pretty is fun, but I want sales.”

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A tank of Walmart beer.

A couple of months ago, Bloomberg covered this in Wal-Mart Stacking Beer in Aisles to Double Alcohol Sales, detailing more of their overall plans. For example, only about 3,700 of their nearly 11,000 stores currently stock beer, which is roughly one-third. In the short term they’ll be increasing that to around 5,000 stores (45%) and hope to eventually sell beer in as many as 6,600 locations, or 60% of their stores.

The Bloomberg report also included a video in which one of the talking heads mentions that while beer sales are relatively flat overall, it’s craft beer that’s selling well. Apparently they’ve also hired more buyers who will be focusing on more local beers, and “craft is playing into that in a big way,” apparently. But as the video later points out, the biggest customers by far are still the big players, and although the Boston Beer Co. is there, it’s dollar amount is far less than ABI, MolsconCoors or Heineken. Samuel Adams sells less than 4% of the beer that Budweiser does and 3.4% of the other three combined. So while they speculate that craft is the key to increasing sales, it doesn’t seem like that’s what they’re actually doing, though to be fair images of Walmart shelves do show a bit more diversity. I confess I don’t really shop our local Walmart, so I may have to check out the beer section from time to time to see if they really are changing their approach.

Nature vs. Nurture As A Cause of Alcoholism

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Since I’ve been featuring a new infographic on the Bulletin every day this year, I’ve started getting a number of e-mails from people and companies trying to promote their own sites using infographics, offering them up as potential ones for me to use. I got one today created by Clarity Way, a recovery center in Hanover, Pennsylvania. In reality, this one is a video that uses graphics similar to those found in infographics to tell its story. Perhaps I’m being overly strict, but I think an “infographic” should be a static image, or at a minimum interactive, but starting with a graphic, with info. It’s right there in the name. Still, there’s some interesting info here, though since they’re trying to sell rehab, I think they’ve inflated some of the data. For example, they claim “7 million children live in a household where at least one parent is dependent on or has abused alcohol.” [emphasis added.] Dependent is one thing, but given the modern definition of binge drinking, almost anyone could be said to have “abused alcohol” at least once in their life. Frankly, none of the statistics seem that terrible to me. There’s an equal chance that alcoholism comes from heredity or from your environment, but only 8.3% of people “suffer from alcohol abuse or dependence.” That wording is also odd. You can certainly suffer from alcohol dependence, but how can you be said to suffer from abuse? Have five drinks in a row, and you’ve abused alcohol, according to most health agencies and neo-prohibitionist groups. Remove those people who have ever “abused” alcohol once, or even occasionally but are not dependent on it, and that number, I suspect, would drop precipitously.

Beer Serving Temperature Poster

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Today’s infographic is a clever poster showing Beer Serving Temperatures using five different colors for the temperature ranges and then creating a pictographic image of a glass of beer. It was created by the design firm Flipo, and they do have the poster for sale in five different size.

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Sierra Nevada’s Berkeley “Torpedo Room” To Open In November

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Sierra Nevada earlier this year announced they’d be opening in taproom in Berkeley. The new taproom, to be called “The Torpedo Room,” is apparently on track to open this November.

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From the press release:

Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. is targeting early November to open its Berkeley, Calif., space, coined the Torpedo Room. The intimate venue—whose name is inspired by the brewery’s innovative dry-hopping device, the Hop Torpedo—fits into a mixed-use building on Fourth Street between University Avenue and Addison Street. The Torpedo Room can host approximately 45 craft beer drinkers for educational tastings of unique and limited Sierra Nevada beers, as well as the occasional craft-centric event dedicated to beer science.

“Our brewers develop creative, flavorful beers at an impressive pace,” said Ken Grossman, Sierra Nevada’s founder. “They’re usually small batches, and it’s those beers folks will find in the Torpedo Room. We think it’s exciting—using rare offerings to showcase who we are and to talk about the science behind our beers. We really hope visitors take part in the dialogue.”

The Torpedo Room will feature 16 taps, and draught beer will be served in taster flights. Guests will also have the option of filling growlers to go, as well as purchasing six-packs, cases and individual specialty bottles. Light snacks will accompany beer flights, but there is not a full menu.

“West Berkeley fosters a great, progressive culture,” Grossman said, “and that includes a lot of ambitious food and drink. We’re eager to be part of the Bay Area craft scene while still staying close to our home base in Chico.”

Here’s what the building looks like now.

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And these are artist’s renderings of what it will look like when the build-out is complete, from the outside.

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And here’s what the interior is expected to look like.

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Beer In Ads #987: The Flower Seller

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Monday’s ad is for Rheingold Beer, from 1955, and features Miss Rheingold from that year, Nancy Woodruff. She’s cozying up to a bunch of blue flowers, which she’s holding against her face, with an urban flower-seller and his outdoor shop in the background. That’s quite a wide smile she’s beaming at us in her all-pink outfit, more than five years before Jackie Kennedy made pink chic.

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Porter’s Porter Bottling Day

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A few weeks ago, for my son’s 12th birthday, we brewed his first batch of homebrew and documented the day as Porter’s Porter Day. The beer was ready to be bottled last weekend, but we only got around to it yesterday. It went surprisingly smoothly.

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Porter having some fun while sterilizing the bottles, which Vinnie Cilurzo from Russian River Brewing was kind enough to donate.

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Both Porter and his little sister Alice were on hand to help.

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Alice seemed to enjoy filling the bottles.

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I worked the capper, but everybody contributed to the effort.

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Porter kept the bottles flowing, from the drying rack to his sister.

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But Porter also took his turn filling bottles, too.

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While I was really the only one who could use the capper.

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Eventually, we ran out of beer and filled the final bottle.

Our yield was about 8 gallons, which filled 57 sixteen ounce bottles, which are now bottle-conditioning in the beer cellar. In a few weeks Porter and I will be on the Brewing Network’s Sunday Show and I’ll taste the results, along with the rest of the adults on the show. Fingers crossed, hopefully it won’t suck. But either way, it’s been great fun homebrewing with my son.

Beer Vs. Wine Infographic

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Today’s infographic is a smackdown between beer and wine to discover who wins the battle royale of alcoholic beverages. It was created by Alex Hillsberg for Finances Online. The infographic itself, Beer Vs. Wine, goes through pros and cons, pluses and minuses and random factoids of each, before drawing its conclusion as to which is the superior drink.

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Click here to see the infographic full size.