The Beer Bust

NB Liquor Admits Beer was a Bust

Actually, the official news release from Booze HQ said no such thing - but if you read between the lines it's there.

What the press flak from NB Liquor actually said was that they were "very pleased with these results". In August, the store brand beer generated about 1% of all beer sales. To put that into perspective, the booze corp sold 1 million (!!) cases of beer in August and 990,000 of those were NOT the Selection brand.

This despite the fact that you can't walk into a liquor store without tripping over the Selection Beer display.

So regardless of the fact that August share of sales were down over 60% from the initial launch, that is apparently one for the win column at the booze bunker.

They are even claiming that the $18.67 cases were the reason why beer sales have increased in New Brunswick. The problem with that analysis? When you take away the Selection numbers, beer sales were still up! So basically if they had done nothing they would still be making money. But we guess that's true of any monopoly.

Curiously absent from the presser was any mention of how sales affected border communities. You may recall that the whole reason given for entering into an untendered contract with Moosehead to produce Selection Beer was to compete with low prices in Quebec. Does anyone know what Selection sales were like in places like Edmundston and Campbellton?