Originally posted by MilkmanDan
Originally posted by iowaherkeye
Originally posted by MilkmanDan
There is no such thing as an "overpriced beer". A beer is worth whatever somebody is willing to pay for it. If you aren’t willing to pay for it, don’t buy it. If nobody is willing to pay that much, the brewer will go out of business.
If that were true, there is no such thing as overpriced anything. All the Hollywood actors (and actresses) deserve their $30 million a movie since we go watch them in the theaters. I realize that isn’t the same, but that is a dumb statement.
I had a really long rant, but decided against it. The point is, yes people will buy overpriced goods (and beer), but it doesn’t mean that they’re happy with it. Business models aside, there’s a point when you’re making 10,000% profit on a beer when you should feel a little guilty taking people’s hard earned money. Yes, it was their choice to buy it, and your passion, but if they’re willing to support you, you don’t need all their money--they’ll buy more in the long run.
/rant
//end drinking
Rant away. If you’re making 10,000% profit on a beer, good for you. Nobody holds a gun to your head and forces you to buy it. Not sure what it means to be "happy" with it--if something costs X dollars and you’re willing and able to spend X, then why wouldn’t you be happy?
You have a beer that costs $50. There are five people who all want to buy it for $50. You, however, whine to the brewer, and he sells it to you for $25 because you made him feel bad. Who wins here, other than you? The brewer is short $25. The other four people are pissed off because they would have bought it for its original price.
It’s worth what somebody will pay for it. If you’re not willing to pay it, deal with it. Do you go out to restaurants and harangue the waiters because you think their entrees cost too much? Do you yell at car dealers because you think their cars should be cheaper? Do you get upset with other people because you think haircuts, oil changes, or football game tickets cost too much?
If you don’t want to pay it, don’t pay it. You are not owed good beer at a cheap price because it happens to be a hobby you enjoy. Brewers make beer. They set a price for the beer. You either buy it or you don’t. If everybody thinks it’s too pricey, nobody buys it. If enough people think it’s worth the cost, they stay in business.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to go to that strip mall near my house to yell at the guy at Subway because I think their subs should be a buck cheaper.
I have no problem with whatever brewers want to charge for their beers. It’s all about supply and demand. If a brewer makes a small batch of something special, and they have the reputation they know will create the demand to make the beers fly off the shelf at a high price, charge a higher price. What is unfortunate is when brewers charge too high a price for a product that is not in short supply and that the high price causes the beer to move more slowly as it deteriorates on the shelf. In that case, the brewer clearly could make a higher profit by lowering the price some, and sell more in the process. I have to believe this doesn’t happen that often with good beer as it would result in a brewer producing beer below their capacity, literally waiting for the beer to move from retail establishments before it made more.
I often wonder if this is the case with 3F’s Dreadnaught. That is a high quality beer that clearly could sell in much higher volume if they lowered the price from $9.99 to something closer to the $4-6 range. My impression is that the wide variety of beers they serve in the brewpub, coupled with relatively limited brewing capacity, keeps the Dreadnaught supply down, which makes it a beer that follows my initial example of a high demand, low supply brew. |
Originally posted by lukin013
Gas is slightly more of a necessity than beer
This is an absurd comment. Get your priorities straight. |
Where do you get Dreadnaught at $9.99, it is $15 every time I see it. |
|
|
Originally posted by lukin013
Originally posted by MilkmanDan
There is no such thing as an "overpriced beer". A beer is worth whatever somebody is willing to pay for it. If you aren’t willing to pay for it, don’t buy it. If nobody is willing to pay that much, the brewer will go out of business.
This is an absurd comment. So you won’t mind when the price of gas continues to rise to $5, $6, $10(K + OT)?? People will pay for it... it’s not over-priced. Rubbish. Gas is slightly more of a necessity than beer but things most certainly can be overpriced, and there are things called morals and ethics that say you should not mark your beer up 10,000%. Just because you can do something does not mean you should.
Speaking of absurd comments - if a brewer can mark up his price 10,000% and there are still enough people willing to pay for it so that said brewer can earn enough profit to keep said brewery going, what exactly is this code of morals and ethics that keep the brewer from doing so?
And he didn’t say anything about minding the price - if he thinks the price is too high for him, he doesn’t buy it. That doesn’t mean it’s overpriced.
That’s not to say I agree with his comment that there’s no such thing as overpriced. It’s overpriced when it reaches a point where the brewer doesn’t have enough people willing to buy it and still be able to keep the brewery going. |
Originally posted by eboats
Where do you get Dreadnaught at $9.99, it is $15 every time I see it.
Whats left of it in ohio is priced at $10. |
If i could get Dreadnaught for $15 never mind $10 a bottle its probably all i would drink, as it would be cheaper than most beers here. |
There IS the old-school concept of ’shame’ in relation to the pricing of anything.
There has to be clear, definable cause to legitimately shame people who are in business. Anything else comes off being a bitch.
Some valuation, respect and appreciation should come way ahead of any ’self entitled’ bitching, though - or else why not push on and leave the brewers alone? Just MHO. |
|
|
All of this sounds to me like growing pains for the Craft Beer segment. It is about choice, and there are choices throughout the spectrum (40’s to BA). Here in the US, we have not been faced with the concept of "super-premium" pricing for beer. We see it in other segments, wine, cheese, whiskey, housing, autos, etc, etc.
As options expand in the beer segment, we will see the top end price boundary expand as well. Does this mean that there will be beers that you can not afford to try in the future? Probably. Well, I love wine, and there are 1,000’s of wines that I can not afford to try (and that is not even including rare and aged releases).
Sucks that beer may head this way, but as long as there is a market for these goods, that market will be fulfilled.
I’m just glad I was part of beer appreciation when I could afford almost every beer on earth. |
I don’t see very many craft brewers pulling up to work in a Ferrari. I’ve always made the argument that the top tier breweries don’t charge enough, particularly for their specialty products. Most every high level craft brewer is facing serious capacity constraints because they simply cannot brew enough quickly enough for the market. It is Econ 101 that they aren’t charging what the market will bear.
Take a look at Dark Lord Day as an example. FFF sells out their entire stock in a matter of hours at a special event. They could obviously distribute this beer in a different manner, put up with a lot less headache, and make a heck of a lot more money. But they don’t, and they still take a huge amount of heat about their pricing.
Brewers provide us with a tremendous amount of enjoyment with the products they make. I would like to see them living like rock stars for their effots. I will miss the days when I could literally buy virtually any beer that I wanted to, but this is a step that needs to take place, and will take place in a free market economy.
To sum up: Tomme - you need to charge us more, you haven’t come close to maxing out what we drinkers are willing to pay. You deserve a raise and a nice vacation.
|
Originally posted by OKBeer
Originally posted by lukin013
Originally posted by MilkmanDan
There is no such thing as an "overpriced beer". A beer is worth whatever somebody is willing to pay for it. If you aren’t willing to pay for it, don’t buy it. If nobody is willing to pay that much, the brewer will go out of business.
This is an absurd comment. So you won’t mind when the price of gas continues to rise to $5, $6, $10(K + OT)?? People will pay for it... it’s not over-priced. Rubbish. Gas is slightly more of a necessity than beer but things most certainly can be overpriced, and there are things called morals and ethics that say you should not mark your beer up 10,000%. Just because you can do something does not mean you should.
Speaking of absurd comments - if a brewer can mark up his price 10,000% and there are still enough people willing to pay for it so that said brewer can earn enough profit to keep said brewery going, what exactly is this code of morals and ethics that keep the brewer from doing so?
And he didn’t say anything about minding the price - if he thinks the price is too high for him, he doesn’t buy it. That doesn’t mean it’s overpriced.
That’s not to say I agree with his comment that there’s no such thing as overpriced. It’s overpriced when it reaches a point where the brewer doesn’t have enough people willing to buy it and still be able to keep the brewery going.
At which point the market takes care of it--if you price it so high nobody wants it, the brewery goes under.
I see this discussion, in many ways, as the flip side of what we beer geeks face from wine snobs all the time--"it’s only beer". Sure, it’s normal for someone to spend $50 on a bottle of nice wine, but hey, that’s wine. Wine is an expensive hobby. Beer should be cheap! I can get a world-class beer for $10. There’s no way my beer should cost more than that!
It’s us wine-snobbifying ourselves. Nobody questions why a fine wine could cost a pretty sum, but somebody charges $30 for a bottle of beer and suddenly they’re rip-off artists. Why? BECAUSE IT’S JUST BEER, MAN. Beer is always cheap, right?
It’s worth what somebody is willing to pay for it. If you can’t afford an expensive beer, buy a cheaper one. Or get a better job. |
