The Beer Store is fighting back folks. A total of four Ontario retail beer stores (just under one per cent of the stores) are to be modernized. They will serve as leaders in the supposedly better way of merchandising beer. Ontario’s foreign-owned Brewers’ Retail is not going to give in to convenience stores without a fight. The old In and Out stores are rallying the troops.
The troops are not only to be rallied and trained (that is new) but they are to be issued new uniforms. They will be labelled on the back as Beer Champion or Beer Enthusiast. They forgot about the employees who get to wear one saying Returns Skank. The good news is that this uniform closely resembles hazardous material garb.
It has also been revealed that the foreign owners of The Beer Store have finally learned that not all Canadians are over seven foot tall. They say they are going to fix that impossible to read beer wall. It is supposed to help you find the beer you want and check prices but has baffled Ontarians for years.
One experiment is to replace the beer wall with digital touch screens. That might work if you bring a kid with you to show you how to use the program.
The funniest line in all this info is that there is now to be ambient music and helpful, pleasant staff. Since you will never hear music, ambient or otherwise, over the crashing of cases of bottles and kegs, it will have to be loud heavy metal. And as for helpful, pleasant staff, the best we usually get out of them is “Are yuh gonna buy beer?” or “we ain’t got none!”
What The Beer Store has continued to fail to understand is that they are not going to attract women to the stores as they exist or how they now envisage them. It takes an entirely different approach to satisfying the female customer for beer.
What was hoped in switching sales over to the convenience stores is that some of the more competitive convenience stores might start to develop expertise in the cooking and entertaining with beer. Women, being far better networkers than men, would start to share this information and patronize these more knowledgeable stores. And as you know, success breeds on success.
And Brewers’ Retail is a disgrace across Ontario. If your favourite political party does not fix this problem damn soon, we will have to find a party that will.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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