[SPEAKER_00]: All right, West for years, buying bourbon had gotten a little bit weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't just hard to find what you wanted.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't just competitive, but it was weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were seeing like, weird practices at liquor stores.
[SPEAKER_00]: You had to buy a bundles.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were like crazy inflated prices.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was inconsistency in the rules of how you could get access to stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now the market's cool and down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the big question is, have these stores corrected their terrible behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you want to hear about it, then stick around.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we've tried to get rid of you, but here you are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is for you guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: This episode is not directed at any specific store other than the one I will mention.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a deep-o.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't like you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, everyone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a deep-o can suck a fart out of my butt.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have to believe that out.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I need to believe that out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Leave it in.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was great.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this episode is not calling out any other stores than that one.
[SPEAKER_01]: So just keep the rest up to your imagination.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now, there is great retailers out there, but there are some other ones that took advantage of the moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to have states worth in fact.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it got a little wild west going on for a little while where people were just doing outrageous things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we're here to kind of see what has happened and are that is that still happening or have they been forced to kind of humble themselves and come back to reality?
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that's really what needs to happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Real quick, disclaimer.
[SPEAKER_00]: 10,000 foot view.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people don't understand this.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a supplier, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: That could be the distiller, it could be the baller, got you.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have to sell into the state, into a wholesaler, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they have a contract between those two typically, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So they have standardized market pricing that's defined by the contract.
[SPEAKER_00]: The wholesaler doesn't get to just go, oh, distance more popular.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to mark this up.
[SPEAKER_00]: 100% distance less popular.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to do this one 20.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have a pre-range amount.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the amount they're allowed to mark it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: then the whole seller sells it to the retailer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the retailer sells it to you, the consumer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the only one that's not contractually obligated in their pricing was the retailer.
[SPEAKER_00]: The retailer can price it anything that they want.
[SPEAKER_00]: And no one's allowed to influence their pricing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason why is because they figured that as a retailer, you should be able to do business the way that you want, because your customers don't have to buy from you, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: They go downstairs and down the road, and then buy from someone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you want to buy Buffalo Trace, there's probably only one wholesaler in your area that you can buy from.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so those individuals weren't allowed to play games, but the retailers, they were allowed to play games.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason why I was always against retailers playing games, and I thought that it was unethical, was because you know who the consumers thought was playing the game?
[SPEAKER_01]: The supply.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who ever made the whiz right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I still get people coming in the comments and saying, you know, Buffalo traces garbage because they did this and they did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was all decisions that the retailer made and, oh, by the way, if the supplier had tried to influence that behavior, it's a literal crime and they could lose their right to sell alcohol in the state that that retailer resided in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so let's get all that out of the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what were some of the analytical things that you saw during the peak?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you'd see this, I saw this several times where you had to, they would have a big display of some crappy nasty overpriced vodka as you walk in the door.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, oh, if you want to get one of our allocated bottles, you've got a by two bottles of this and a bottle fireball and then we'll sell you the blends that you want.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, okay, I don't want any of this other stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm here to just literally buy whiskey, I don't drink.
[SPEAKER_01]: over the price of vodka.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was one thing, like the mandatory bundles that they would put something together and you had to get something of each in order to get the bottle you actually wanted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I wasn't a huge fan of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, keep in mind, if you're a retailer and you might, now the whole start is we're not supposed to do this, but they were, they were, well, it's called an inducement and it's illegal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they'd go, and they'd go, okay, well, you want to case a blanton's cool,
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to buy this much of Wheatley vodka and then you qualify for the blends.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or this much of fireball, which you're both owned by Sajara.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what ultimately caused the demise of the relationship between their old national distributor and the company that was producing the Buffalo Trace Products, which is Sajara Corporation, was sometimes the whole seller would go, you have to buy this case of unknown champagne from this other company that's not associated with Sajara.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, it did encourage bundling behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that one I wasn't a huge fan of and to be quite honest I had some relationships that some other like your stores that we let me buy the bundle one store and then return the bottles I didn't like for store credit nice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, that's a weird work around.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that was a little work around I won't say you who cuz I don't know that it's 100% legal with any guys
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a cool setup, but the thing that I hated the most, the most unethical thing was the thing that we already called out, and that was extreme pricing above MSRP.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: liquor depot yeah no liquor depot is the absolute worst worst worst at markups they still and I I've going there everyone's while to pick up just random bottles of wine or something my wife needs because it's close to my house they still have bottles of GTS in there from probably 2022 yeah
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That are like $1,500 for the bottle.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like no one's going by the camera.
[SPEAKER_01]: No one's going to do that anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're all past that, okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a time where it was tempting, but it's not tempting anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you guys in that guy is still like, oh here's a little coming up by it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I won't use the accent that he has, but it's like, they're going to sit in that shelf for who knows how long and there's well or single barrels in there, there's blends, golds in there, there's, I mean, any of those things, papies in there and they're all thousands of dollars, and it's like, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but the other thing that I saw a lot of was like,
[SPEAKER_01]: the insider trading deals if you think that's that's probably what I hated the most yeah I could get past the expensive bottles because you can go to another store and maybe find a better deal right but you don't know what you don't know if you walk into store and they don't have anything on the shelf you assume they don't have that product you don't know that they have a huge room in the back full of those products that you want to buy and but they're got posted notes all over
[SPEAKER_01]: all these hidden bottles.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a clipboard that's paying up like under the table.
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole bottle's for.
[SPEAKER_01]: The case doesn't even get out to the floor.
[SPEAKER_01]: It goes right from the loading dock into some guys' back seat because some arrangement he had with the store owner.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, that was the most frustrating part to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and not your stories about a store would have an advertised price, but that wasn't the real price.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, if you're our friend, this is your friend.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the price for our friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're not our friend, it's this other price.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, those were the kinds of, in my opinion, unethical things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing that really made it unethical, it's not illegal, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But what really made it unethical was the impact that it had.
[SPEAKER_00]: on the perception of the would be buyer for the brand.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for bourbon as a whole, there are so many people that when you ask them, like, hey, why aren't you engaged as much anymore?
[SPEAKER_00]: It was these practices that drove them away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we hated it, but you got to look back and understand why it happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, even though it sucked and even though we weren't fans of it, the demand far out exceeded the supply.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I can see why it's tempting as a store owner to be like, okay, I got people coming in literally every 15 minutes asking me if I've blanton's.
[SPEAKER_01]: What if I just took this $56 product and made it a $156 product?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean,
[SPEAKER_01]: because we've done videos during the boom of why liquor stores would get fed up with that question because most of their sales bases, not on those premium bourbon projects, that's how they pay their bills.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we can understand looking back at why they would do such things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Consumers were willing to overpay.
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, secondary markets were were blowing up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's a way that they were competing with secondary markets as well
[SPEAKER_01]: paying more, you could just buy it, so it was, it was understandable as to what was happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even though it was frustrating, I get it, I understand.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know how those companies have their own logo on a glass, wouldn't that be cool if there was a website where you could go and put your own logo on your whiskey glass that you drink like at home?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but like, I would want a variety of glasses.
[SPEAKER_00]: So small drinking glasses, some larger neat glass, maybe like a rocks glass.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what about a tumbler?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the Yeti tumbler?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that'd be dude.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you can't get your logo on that, that'd be awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like imagine like even like plastic glasses imagine you're like at the pool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you've got like your own whiskey club or your own name or something like on your little plastic glass you're drinking out of at the pool.
[SPEAKER_00]: that would be awesome and like you know how sometimes when you're in a bottle sharing you've got to clean your glass out because you're going to take a real small pouring you know like a yeah like if you get like a custom like lit free rag that'd be really good with your logo like right on it yeah and and not just that dude what if you know how you always get samples yeah yeah so like you have your box it's like just a blank wooden box but what if on top of there you had like
[SPEAKER_01]: your own brand or something or yeah your logo that's like you know west's whiskey collection right right something you could even use that for charities too because like you could do like a sample box that you didn't like a charity raffle but you could custom match it that'd be cool dude what if the same website like all those things were there but you could also use it for the holidays coming up like oh yeah like like admin counterbox
[SPEAKER_01]: You can do that and I could get your like some of the special for you on it and give it to you as a gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, as a gift for Christmas, that's really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a website.
[SPEAKER_00]: What if there was a website that had all of those things?
[SPEAKER_00]: And what if the company that did it could set up a custom website for you to pick any of those things?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, dude, that's like, what if there was a new one?
[SPEAKER_01]: I enjoyed the point systems.
[SPEAKER_01]: I enjoyed that kind of thing at Bill Loyalty, which was what Whiskey hunting to me was all about all along, is building a relationship.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what you began to see starting to change as a recent is these bottles that people were chasing, you start seeing them on the shelves for a lot longer time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're not just talking liquor depots, had bottles on their shelves in the glass case for three years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Three years, four years now.
[SPEAKER_01]: But bottles, you know, that,
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I've been seeing a ton of like each Taylor's right like just on the show literally just two everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you you saw a yellow tube and a store you were running down the aisle to get it before somebody else and now you they're everywhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what you started to see the secondary prices started to soften.
[SPEAKER_01]: If not some of the secondary markets just doing away in general.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm
[SPEAKER_01]: Consumers began to get a lot more selective because their money wasn't going as far They're with inflation and all the other you know real life picking back up bills and everything coming back into play No free money from the government that we were getting these checks during during COVID And so yeah people began to get a lot more selective and then I think just the sales began to just slowly Really come down to where they need to be
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, some of it has to do with we're not replacing, well, one, people aren't building collections like this anymore, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you've got those impacts effect, you have legalization of marijuana, you have younger people not drinking as much.
[SPEAKER_00]: People are more health conscious, people are more conscious of their budgets.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, sales have slowed down.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know we we are seeing a lot of those negative behaviors that have shifted and that's great but you know not all the stores are corrected i think liquor do you post still has they're gonna see him prices yeah but many stores have started to improve their their practices but for me i'm trying to remain loyal to the stores that did it right when times were hot right yeah that's the thing is find those you know find those stores that were doing your right
[SPEAKER_01]: If those are the guys we need to take our hands off to, those are the guys who were tempted.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the temptation was still there for them as it was for everybody else, but they found a way to do it the right way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And those are the business as I want to support.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have more power now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's less urgency.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can make better decisions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can choose to return to like normal buying behavior and not camp out and not freak out when you don't get a bottle because that's face it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can just go get a non-create nine and drink with whiskey.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can sit up at it myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, to put it in real estate terms, Randy, like you're familiar with.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a buyer's market right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got the power as the buyer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like there's so many options.
[SPEAKER_01]: People have learned there's a lot of really good whiskeys out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to just chase down the big names.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think stores have finally realized that buyers are thinking along those lines now, so they have to be a lot more strategic and they're pricing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we've got the power, let's use it responsibly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like I just could just go off preaching right now and get fired up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's support the good guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: Make the good guys win.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And punished.
[SPEAKER_01]: Beautiful patriotic music right here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's keep this country great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because Burman is a unique American American spirit guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what it's all about the good old America spirit of taking care of your fellow man All right, all right off the soapbox.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's get into ways
[SPEAKER_01]: If you love supporting one another, then you're going to love supporting this mission because that's what we're all about.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's connecting with people and getting whiskey back to what it was supposed to be, and how it is all about connection.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if you have that's something that resonates with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a few ways you can support Bourbonville Talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: One is the patron, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: The names you see on the screen right now are just the top three contributing levels.
[SPEAKER_01]: but there are tons of levels with lots of budget options that fit whatever your needs are.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you want to get involved, but you only got a few bucks to throw around every month toward that, don't worry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Click the link and check out the options and see if there's something that fits your budget.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other thing that you could do is go to bermeraltalk.com.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a merchandise site.
[SPEAKER_01]: curated by whiskey lovers for whiskey lovers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lindsey Randy's wife is incredibly creative.
[SPEAKER_01]: She can create some of the coolest whiskey merch and it's all customizable too.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can go on the website.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you like the the glassware, you like the shirts or you like what you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: sample boxes or a gifting box is anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can do anything to customize it to fit you, whoever you're giving it to, or maybe your whiskey clock.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't customize shirts right now, but it's coming real soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Coming soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So go to whiskey, uh, merch central of the world online, and that is bourbonrilltalk.com.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go check it out last, but not least Randy is in real estate agent in Dallas, Houston, and Austin.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're looking
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can find links for all three ways to support the channel in the video description below.
[SPEAKER_00]: If this year first time tuning in, we'd love to tell you what our motivation is and its connection.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just about this brown spirit, which is beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: We love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do love it, but it's about community and connection.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that became the mission of mine when I lost the love on the suicide.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I realized after his passing, talking to some of his friends, who was missing some of those social connections that keep people bound to this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at the same time, I was getting deeper in my process of getting involved in the whisky enthusiasts community.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I saw that whisky was a great conduit to meet other people and I actually started to make new friends and was able to cut some toxic relationships out of my life that I realized were probably not great from my mental health.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought maybe if I could get you connected to whisky, whisky, do the rest of the job and get you connected to others.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we ended up starting this channel, but ultimately from seeing the opportunities to connect with people online, we realized like we need a forum that doesn't have a lot of negativity in it because there were there were a lot of people online showing hate strangers.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we also learned from those haters online that if they can hate a stranger online There's nothing that keeps us from loving your stranger online And that's why we end every episode the same way and that's this If you woke up this morning, you're unsure whether or not anyone loved you Just know that we love you We'll see you next time