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The important part is at the end: However, the state of alcohol purchasing says something larger about the American consumer. We’re seeing folks once again o
by version_five 4y ago
The important part is at the end:
However, the state of alcohol purchasing says something larger about the American consumer. We’re seeing folks once again organize into two camps – haves and have nots.
Consumer demand for singular “sub-premium” beers is rising at the same time as high-end mezcal.
This has been accelerating since the 2008 "crisis" and got way worst the past few years. There is no middle, there's either premium to cater to the (mostly) white collar class who are now comparatively rich, and there's crap for the working class, who are now super poor.
- notch898a 4y agoMaybe I'm an outlier but the more high end beer/alcohol I buy, the more sub-premium beer I buy as well. That is buying more sub-premium means I've gotten richer. I'll have a nice mezcal with a shitty bud light or whatever afterwards. If I don't have a high end drink then that's when I'll have something middle of the road like a local affordable craft or something and since it's affordable I don't need to buy a sub-premium beer to finish off the night. Could it be people have just discovered better alcohol and are drinking that for the taste and then the budget stuff for the buzz? The masses may have discovered it's kind of an optimal strategy.
- Domenic_S 4y agoIt's a strategy that's endured thru the millennia: John 2:10 > “A host always serves the best wine first,” he said. “Then, when everyone has had a lot to drink, he brings out the less expensive wine..."
- version_five 4y agoGood advice, but If I understood that passage they all just got a bunch of free wine though
- dylan604 4y agoit was all free to the guests. the passage was in response to how good the miracle wine was to have tasted. it was the end of the night when they were running out of wine, so the expectation would be that they had already long finished off the good stuff. but here they are bringing out the best wine at the end of the shindig.
- dylan604 4y agowhen you see someone walking out of the store with a 30 pack of Keystone, you know they are not drinking for the taste.
- sokoloff 4y ago"Schaefer is the one beer to have when you're having more than one." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRecWSp4VFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRecWSp4VFg
- red-iron-pine 4y agoMore than 6
- paulmd 4y agokirkland light: it's 11am somewhere! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHRNzj_G7Us https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHRNzj_G7Us
- sokoloff 4y ago“Available in 48 packs where you buy your paint!”
- DontchaKnowit 4y agoI'd drink keystone over like half the garbage craft beers or like a budweiser any day
- alephnerd 4y agoEhn, it's just Coors Light in a separate can. And I can confirm that due to unscientific experiments of mine while in college. Same with Natty Light btw - that's just Bud Light.
- dylan604 4y agoit's more about the fact there's 30
- gwbas1c 4y agoI don't know about you, but I've always known "joe six-pack" to be pretty price conscious. Then again, as others in this thread have pointed out; the market is rather saturated with gross $12 4-packs. I've been suckered by a few.
- jxramos 4y agoI was watching a Robert Kiyosaki talk with some podcast recently where he mentioned investing in Wagyu beef ranches I think. And he said something to the effect that the poor will stop buying hamburger, but the rich will suck the additional costs because they essentially are not stoic enough to go without was the vibe of his claim. So pretty much the division of essential and non-essential curves differently for different classes is how it sounds.
- atlasunshrugged 4y agoI don't have enough money to be investing in Wagyu beef ranches but I agree with that (especially if they really get cell based meat going, but even without just based on regs and consumer behavior RE animal cruelty). Eventually it'll be just premium meats vs... tbd (plant replacements, bugs, cell based meat off an assembly line)
- version_five 4y agoThe conclusion makes sense though I'm not sure it being a question of a kind of stoicism. From personal experience, if you have money, costs go up, and you get angry you're spending more, but you can afford it so you suck it up and pay (ironically, a bit stoic). If you literally don't have the money, you have no choice but to change your behavior, so you go without.
- jerlam 4y agoFunny you brought up Kiyosaki (Rich Dad, Poor Dad author) since one of the lessons in the book was - the rich (wealth accumulators) are smart enough to not spend their money on luxuries such as expensive new cars, and presumably high-end craft beers.
- kmoser 4y agoIf the rich aren't buying expensive new cars (e.g. Rolls Royce?), who is? Certainly not the rest of us.
- imtringued 4y ago
- agentwiggles 4y agoObviously this is wildly anecdotal and a laughably tiny sample size, but I have found myself moving back towards a few favorite cheap beers over the last few years. I just got kinda sick of heavy stouts and hop-bomb IPAs, and have found myself enjoying cheap watery pilsners more. I drink a lot of PBR completely unironically, and my favorite local "craft" beer is "Hilltop Lager" - which is sold in red and white tall cans clearly designed to ape the PBR look and feel a little bit. I don't know that this is a counterpoint to TFA really, but I wonder if some degree of folks just getting sick of the craft beer craze could be a confounding factor.
- thedaveoflife 4y agoI like the taste of IPAs but can't stand the hangovers if i have more than one
- maxerickson 4y agoIf you grind your teeth/clench your jaw during sleep, consider trying a bite guard. No more headaches for me. (I got one when I had a couple nasty headaches during a period I didn't drink for a few months. I knew from my dentist I ground my teeth but that was what pushed me over the edge.)
- jhbadger 4y agoIt's popular for some reason for IPAs to have high alcohol (like 7% or higher), but there's been a recent trend in IPAs (and other styles) for "session" beers that have more normal ~5% levels. I know it's just a few percent, but I find two or three pints of a lower alcohol beer leave me feeling much better than the higher ones.
- boredtofears 4y agoThis is where I'm at. Pale Ales or Session IPA's both have lower calorie and lower ABV. Toppling Goliath's Psuedo Sue is fantastic. It's not cheap though.
- TrueSlacker0 4y ago
- Workaccount2 4y agoIf you had assets during the pandemic you got many good gifts, some once in a lifetime (those 1.95% mortgages). If you didn't have assets, you got a check for $2000. It really cannot be overstated enough the wealth divide that pandemic QE created. The way things are you have to inflate assets by $100 for $1 to make it down to poverty level hands.
- acuozzo 4y ago> It really cannot be overstated enough the wealth divide that pandemic QE created. :s/\<created\>\.$/exacerbated./ The underlying causes go back further than Roger & Me.
- Gibbon1 4y agoLast two years the increase in equity in my house and my retirement savings exceeds my income over the last ten. I got that for doing absolutely nothing.
- jollyllama 4y agoSome of us got neither
- bailoon 4y ago> If you had assets during the pandemic you got many good gifts, some once in a lifetime (those 1.95% mortgages). Exactly. Real estate doubled, tripled. Stock prices skyrocketed. Established stocks like Apple triple during the pandemic. It's mindboggling. That's after 12 years of continuous growth after the 2008 recession. Going off of assets, the past 15 years has been the greatest economic boom in human history.
- yamtaddle 4y agoI used to (like, 5 years ago) find a lot of $7 and $8 bombers that were pretty great, or $9 6-packs that were damn solid. From my perspective it's not so much that I stopped buying mid-tier beer, as that it vanished and isn't there to buy anymore. Now I look at a $12 4-pack of beer that's not even that good and wonder if I should put the money toward a very-nice scotch instead.... I still buy from a few brands that I know well and that do deliver good quality at non-crazy prices, but there just aren't as many "yeah, sure, at that price I'll give it a shot" beers on the shelf. At least locally.
- tvanantwerp 4y agoI've had this same experience. Every time I go to my local specialty beer shops, it's nothing but 4-packs that _start_ at $16. I've never even heard of most of them, and a large portion are just the really over-done trendy IPAs that every brand new brewery seems eager to produce. Maybe 20% or less of their offerings are what I'd call a solid mid-range 6-pack of beer.
- 88913527 4y agoLocal markets vary, but I regularly see ~$1/bottle as a promotion price for "mid-tier" (aka premium) beers, or to give examples of brands: Corona, Stella, etc. (I'm not talking about stuff like PBR here). These mid-tier's can be had for $11.99 12-pack, 12 fl oz. The non-promotion price is closer to $18. Both the promotional price and not-on-sale price began noticeably ticking upwards in January. I haven't bothered with crafts unless I can get it on tap when I'm out. Paying craft prices for at-home enjoyment isn't the right value proposition for me.
- maxerickson 4y agoBells and New Belgium six packs are $10-$12 here, a long with a bunch of similarly priced stuff from smaller regional breweries. Are they not mid tier?
- stcroixx 4y agoThere are more rare and expensive beers, but Bells is absolutely top tier quality for me.
- xadhominemx 4y agoThis is just not true. The real wages and wealth of those the the 10th to 98th percentiles of income have all grown since the period prior to the financial crisis. The real wages of those in the 10th-20th percentile have grown the most.
- ccooffee 4y agoDo you have a preferred source for this? I went down a rabbit-hole of googling and trying to evaluate how reliable the sources were and got pretty lost. I found several articles claiming to use data from the US Federal Reserve with conflicting interpretations.
- boc 4y agoYeah but it feels true, which is almost good enough. It’s just like everyone who knows a recession is just around the corner. Hard to support with evidence but it’s the vibe du jour.
- tenebrisalietum 4y agoPrices have also increased?