Tag: beer delivery

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Peel the Label – Ghost Kitchens

Ghost Kitchens keep popping up in the paper (L.A. Times) and the World Wide Weird (Eater) about the issues and ethics of Ghost Kitchens. Basically, a ghost kitchen just cooks food for delivery. They can be tied to one of the delivery services or be a central hub that prepares meals normally prepared at the restaurant proper.

So, how does this affect beer? If delivery becomes the norm, that means less people sitting down at a restaurant or sitting down at a bar waiting for their table. It could mean that the restaurant with the great beer list starts buying cheaper beer because they are being squeezed by PostGrubMates and their fees. It could mean that restaurants close. Now, here in Los Angeles, that would be less of a beer loss than in cities like Portland, Denver and Seattle where the two are interwoven unlike L.A. where they very rarely meet and breweries are creating their own restaurants.

It also means the potential loss of cheap space for breweries if this trend ramps up and ghost kitchens look for spots that will geographically work for the delivery swarms.

The last item that I see is that it will push more breweries to package. And ironically, beer will at least be the one thing delivered that will stay warm while the cheese congeals and fries become limp and cold. But these ghost kitchens might just become bulk buyers in a way that a stand-alone beer delivery wouldn’t work. That is, if they can move with the alcohol laws.

Then again, prepared food delivery is just going to be a no-go for many people especially rural but even in just a small city and their impacts will not ripple far or wide.

Peel the Label is an infrequent series with no photos or links. Just opinion.

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Chase Car

It is a delivery to your door world in 2018 and it may be coming to craft beer too.

CraftChaser is a new company dipping their toe into delivering local beer from tap room to your door.

Currently, the delivery area stretches in the South Bay area del Rey to Santa Monica and they have (4) brewery partners headlined by Yorkshire Square with Scholb Brewing being my second choice.

I will discuss this in more detail on Food GPS in a week or so but just wanted to let you know that they are open and you can test out the service and see if it works for you.

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A New Version of Distribution

Yesterday, I handed out a reading assignment. Today, I offer up some ideas to fix independent beer distribution (or at least improve it a little).

1. No More 1 Way Street
In too many brewery and distributor agreements, the brewery is at a vast disadvantage. In many states, they can only opt out of a distributor if it can prove that the distributor is a hot trash mess. That needs to change. Any agreement, anywhere, needs to have specific deliverables negotiated by both sides. No laundry list but, for example, four key points (two for both sides) that would allow an amicable split with no payment from either side. Say, distributor must not have more than a certain number of craft breweries or will patrol shelves for old IPA’s. This would make distributors who let brands languish stay on their toes but also slow down distributor hopping.

2. More Interlocked Companies
It would be great to see Distributor A in Santa Barbara have an agreement with Distributor B in Los Angeles to bucket brigade beer from one locale to another via a trusted partner. This may be pie in the capitalist sky but if there were a chain of distributors up and down the state that were coordinated, the flow of California beer might rival the big players.

3. Get Into the Big Box Stores
Maybe there could be a coordinated, #independent section in your local Target or Ralphs. This might be even more of a reach than goal # 2 but instead of fighting for shelf space mano e mano, a push that has one or two beers for a month and then switches to two new ones focusing on local might be a play that could work.

What will come to pass might not be as rosy but hopefully the bottles and cans can keep on moving from brewery to store.

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B-Dubs at Your Door

photo from Dayton Business Journal

I have pooh-poohed beer delivery in the past. The folks with the logistic capability don’t have the beer that people want delivered and those that do, have harder roads to cover. What I did not think of is food delivery. There is some infrastructure there and if they buy decent beer, it could possibly work.

Granted the photo above shows one horrible beer and one that I would probably order from Summit.

Wings and beer delivery from the B-Dubs is starting in Ohio and if it succeeds without cannibalizing their sit-down restaurants than you might see more “B-Dubs Express” in your town.

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Shop with BrewPublik

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Another beer service has entered the interwebs, Brewpublik (not to be confused with the excellent Brewpublic blog) has developed what they call a beergorithm to help you discover new beer.

Here is their spiel: “You tell us what you like, and then based on your personal preferences, we pick out beers that you are sure to love. Then those beers arrive at your door every month. It’s like a monthly beer Christmas. You never know what you are going to get, but each crate is delivered with your personal preferences in mind.”

You create a taste profile with five beers that you love and then choose the size of package you desire and then you have it delivered to your door.

They liken it to Pandora and not Amazon or Netflix. The interface was a snap to use. It didn’t take more than 5 minutes to create a profile and jump to the ordering stage. I didn’t place an order since it is for Raleigh and Durham for now (though they plan expansion) but maybe franchisees will pick it up and run with it.