I was contacted by a licensee about why there is no Stolichnaya Ohranj Vodka in Lackawanna county. Being a bit skeptical I looked and saw that the PLCB lists 4 different bottles available. #7188 is a closeout and the system says there are 0 in the county which makes sense. The replacement for #7188 is #3060 which is shown to be in 2/3rds of all the stores in the state....unless you live in Lackawanna county which has 7 bottles listed for the entire county but the licensee says there isn't any. I called one of the stores and sure enough the inventory says they have 2 but the physical check says they don't.
Next up is #9562 which is a 1L size bottle that the PLCB purposely fucks the citizens of the state over by not having it available anywhere but the border stores that are designed to keep people from going out of state for better prices and selection. Not having a outlet store Lackawanna county doesn't get these so the licensee is out of luck there. Lastly there is the 1.75L size #6906 which is shown to be in 280 stores unless you live in Lackawanna county where there is none.
Now the PLCB went 158% or $66 million over budget to get this spiffy inventory system in place so orders could be processed better and inventory tracked. They use a socialist system where everything is centrally planned out of Harrisburg and the stores are told what they will be getting so it really isn't the stores fault the product isn't available it is the PLCB's.
I understand that stores run out of product but we are talking about all 13 stores in an entire county. This would NEVER happen in a private system. Chalk yet another one up under the FAIL column for state control.
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I really don't understand the naivete when it comes to the private industry. Beer is privatized and rather than having the decisions made by Harrisburg they are made by the wholesaler. Try to get a case of Bell's Hopslam. The wholesaler that carries that brand decides which accounts will receive any or what number of cases or kegs. Most wholesalers are so inept that nearly 15% of all deliveries have either the wrong product or wrong quantities. If the current liquor system was privatized there would be no means for the consumer to ever locate rare or unique bottles. As an example just try to find a centralized system now for locating a case of Troeg's Nugget Nectar in your county and how many cases are available.
Harrisburg IS the wholesaler, and the ONLY wholesaler for the entire state (no chance to go anywhere else in the state, and of course, no LEGAL option to go OUT of the state), and that ONE wholesaler controls EVERY SINGLE DECISION of what wines or spirits are allowed to be sold. No beer wholesaler has that kind of power...or potential to screw up.
"If the current liquor system was privatized there would be no means for the consumer to ever locate rare or unique bottles." And yet...somehow they do, every day, in private liquor stores around the world. But for some reason, that wouldn't work in Pennsylvania? You're funny!
So let's compare apples to apples. The centralized Stalinist State Store System gets its allocation of, say, Pappy Van Winkle. Rather than make up numbers about wrong product or wrong quantities delivered (since we can read about how screwed up the State Store's system is in the newspaper), let's assume all the Pappy gets delivered safely to the warehouses, and no one sells some out the back door. That's as close as it will get to the individual stores and individual customers. The State Store System has decided that because they have no clue on how to sell fine whiskeys (and they're right about that, to be fair), they'll just put all the Pappy on sale at once on their wonderful website, and send out an email to everyone who's signed up: PAPPY'S ON SALE NOW! And everyone who happens to get the email as it comes out orders six bottles, and it's all gone in under 5 minutes. GREAT centralized system! VERY fair! EASY for a consumer to locate a rare or unique bottle!
Meanwhile, Joe Canal's (substitute the name of any competent specialty retailer here) gets their allocation, sends out emails well in advance, and then either allocates to the customers by waiting list or by lottery, almost always limiting purchases to one or two bottles, making a much more fair distribution of the goodies.
Yeah, that could never work in PA.
Working online inventory is not limited to the central planning PLCB. In fact you could say that online inventory is LIMITED by the PLCB given how many mistakes they have and that it isn't anywhere near real time. There are hundreds of stores with working inventory systems that didn't go 158% over budget. People get fired for that in the real world - not PLCB world.
"No beer wholesaler has that kind of power or ability to screw up." Hmm, let's take a microbrew that is controlled by one wholesaler over a 5 county region. So if you live in SE PA you really are at the complete control of 1 wholesaler. That wholesaler decides to sell 50% of they receive from the brewery at a special sale at their own retail store then release the other 50% across the 5 county region that they control. Most establishments get none, some get a case, and a few establishments get one keg and one case. So the apples to apples comparison is how the state set up beer distribution as an example as how the state would set up private wine and spirits distribution. I don't think there is an argument that if you want ripple then privatization will provide ripple at every outlet, much like you can get Bud in some format. I can currently get Bud from my local Giant, soon my local Acme, or my beer distributor. None of those 3 has an email list, a website, nor a facebook page with updates for when beer arrives. I also subscribe to the closest Total Wine email list and they never notify when sought after beers arrive. Likely because they would not know one if it did.
The fallacy is that private wholesaler and merchants are responsive and know their product. The private wholesalers will push the big brands and ignore the specialty brands. A majority the merchants will have little knowledge of the product and push volume over selection. That is how it is at 60-70% of the beer distributors and 80-90% of the bar/restaurants/eateries that sell to go beer.
""No beer wholesaler has that kind of power or ability to screw up." Hmm, let's take a microbrew that is controlled by one wholesaler over a 5 county region. So if you live in SE PA you really are at the complete control of 1 wholesaler."
Stop being deliberately dense. That's ONE brand, controlled in ONE area of the state. The PLCB controls ALL brands, in the WHOLE state. Which is why I said, "No beer wholesaler has that kind of power or ability to screw up." If the wholesaler doesn't make you happy with how they allocate one rare craft beer (we don't really say "microbrew" anymore), well, that's allocation, and I've shown, the PLCB doesn't do a better job, they do it worse by essentially throwing it to the winds and forcing you to get the stuff online.
Your blather about availability under privatization is just pure bullshit, and can be proven as such by going to New Jersey, Delaware, or Maryland, so I'm not going to bother answering it, except to say...I AM signed up for Joe Canal's mailing list (it's my closest non-PA liquor store), and I DO get notices of new stuff, what's on tap for growler fills, and yeah, when the Pappy lottery was being run.
I'd call what you're doing fearmongering, except no one's really scared of it except union State Store clerks, Democratic legislators, and Frank Farry, the Bucks County RINO. Everyone else has been out of state and seen that it's bullshit, so we ignore you. Sorry, chum, but you're spouting fabrications, and everyone knows it. The beer wholesale/retail system in PA could use some adjusting -- everyone knows THAT, too, except Pat Deon and the MBDA -- but it still runs better than the State Stores. Take away the case law, and it would run rings around the PLCB.
Unless you have something new to add, you're done here.
By the way, "Deliberately Dense," the State Stores don't carry Ripple. No one does: it's not made anymore. So...what kind of informed commenter and student of the industry are you?
Well here we are 24 hours later and still no change. Not like the PLCB can do anything about the problem is there?
The warehouse is only in ......Lackawanna county.
So here we are 48 hours since I reported this and obviously nothing was done the Monday before I reported this so score another one for taking care of the customers, increasing convenience and adding on to the vast amount of reasons to privatize this dinosaur.
If you do not agree with Lew dare not post here. This blog is only for those that live a life devoted to and in service to alcohol. Make a good point and the public never will never see it. Dare to err in criticizing his master and he will use his tent revival flowery rhetorical style to make you look small. I can't believe he gets paid for this crap.
That's nonsense. I have posted every comment that's come through on this post: every single one. I've consistently stated that I will not post comments that are personal attacks (on anyone, not just me, and believe it or not, personal attacks on me are only about half of them), or ones that simply repeat themselves. It's my blog, and I won't stand for bad behavior. That said, I've kept all the comments that I didn't approve, and in almost six years, there are only 28 (not counting duplicate comments from people who didn't understand how Blogger works; those I approve one and delete the dupes). Most of those are either abuse or direct threats. I allow comments that disagree with me, as long as they're not freighted with abuse.
And duh; I don't get paid for this. It's unpaid political activism, and I have no idea who you think my "master" is. I serve no man in this circumstance. My comments and opinions on the topic of PLCB privatization are strictly my own.
Now, instead of crying, why not come up with some better points? Better yet, start your own blog: they're FREE.
Week 1, Day 4. How long will this go on? Maybe we could start a poll to guess when the PLCB will actually resupply an entire county. The winner would get a bottle of Ohranji imported from New Jersey where they seem to have plenty of it.
Actually, this has nothing to do with anything the PLCB has done. It is an issue with Stoli Group USA LLC not being able to adequately provide the product. It affects 10-15 different Stoli products. There is currently no timetable for when Stoli Group will be able to fix this issue. Sure looked on the surface like a chance to bash the PLCB but alas you're out of luck on this one.
Not sure who's nuts here. The PLCB's product catalog shows a ton of Ohranj available (37 units at my own local store, Good Old Store #0909, for instance), so I call bullshit on Anonymous's contention that it's a Stoli issue. But I also see plenty of Ohranj in Lackawanna County (233 units at the Clarks Summit store, for instance), so what the hell, Albert? Did all that just roll in yesterday? I mean, it could have.
Kinda confused here...
Well, I would imagine that consumers wouldn't notice the issue until the warehouses ran down the supply they did have prior to the issue. That could/would explain the differing amounts in stores. Depends who sells what and which store got some before the current supply was out. I was given contact info for someone at Stoli Group upon asking about the issue but didn't care enough to hang on to it.
Think, please. Even if there IS a Stoli issue...if what Albert says was true, and there was NO Ohranj in the Lackawanna County stores for a week, and now there is in plenty...that's got nothing to do with a Stoli issue. That's a PLCB distribution issue.
It looks like a total of 25 cases were delivered to four stores in the county today. That makes less then half of the stores have product while the average is about 65% I wonder if the other 7 stores had this at all? It is a PLCB issue because they didn't deliver even though the warehouse is in Lackawanna county, nor did they bring any in from other locations, nor did they properly track inventory to prevent this. if it were a Stoli issue you would see shortages in numerous places and not just one county completely out of stock.
I'm not sure what to tell you. It IS a stoli issue lol they've said so themselves
Oh, well, there you go. An anonymous troll on the Internet said it, it MUST be so.
So we have Anonymous saying it is a Stoli issue, Anonymous saying that he had a number to call but didn't and Anonymous saying that Stoli says it is their problem. Sounds a bit contradictory.
He probably works in the stores. Chances are they got a small supply in the warehouse and it all went out on the first few delivery days. Stoli better do something quick because the bailment price reduction is going to add up quick!
Well it is actually a supplier issue. Not a Plcb issue. If u have complaints I can give you a toll free number to call.
Well I can get you said number first thing Monday morning. I am a Plcb employee and am off today.
Under the bailment warehousing model it is definitely a supplier issue. No two ways about it.
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