Before they got smart enough to call their disgusting stores ‘The Beer Store,’ Brewers Retail (formerly Brewers Warehousing Company Ltd.) was referred to by many Ontario residents as the ‘In and Out.’ They were hardly going to call the stores by their formal name and after all, the largest signs at the outlets were ‘In’ and ‘Out.’ The one fixed rule was that only a degenerate slob would send a lady to buy his beer,
Face facts, The Beer Store is a guy place. If a lady wants to buy beer, let her go to the liquor store. The liquor board people sell beer in little lady-like packages. You take the measure of a man at The Beer Store by the number of two-fours he can carry.
But all the chickens have come home to roost at The Beer Store. They have finally found out that woman can not only vote but some have been known to drink a cold beer from a bottle and belch appreciatively. While the brewers have been catering to the guy thing, women have been singing siren songs and plying those he-men with wines and drinks mixed with hard liquors.
This is a problem. Any idiot can go into one of those disgusting beer stores and see why 80 per cent of beer sales are to men. Those lame brains at Brewers Retail are trying to figure out why the sales of beer have been flat for the past 15 years. During the same period, wine sales have increased by more than 70 per cent. Wine makes you sexy. Beer makes you pee.
If the people who want to sell beer had any smarts they would get behind the convenience stores and talk turkey with the Ontario government. Beer in smaller packages is a convenience store item. Beer also belongs in grocery stores. It can be sold from coolers, ready to use. Primp the packaging, change the advertising and beer could be more attractive to the ladies. The big brewers could take a lesson from the craft brewers in that.
The lessons are in history. Beer has been a universal drink of both men and women for thousands of years. It is a healthy drink—in moderation. It belongs. It belongs on the table with food. It is a refreshing drink when people are relaxing.
The mistake was made almost a hundred years ago when Ontario’s ignorant politicians tried to appease the equally ignorant Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. It is time we gave beer its place. We can let The Beer Stores learn how to be recycling centres.
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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