Why is this such a persistent thing with supermarket wine sales?
Now take your hands off the keyboard for a moment before you rattle off “because they want to encourage customers to buy more!!!” and keep reading.
Sure, offering volume discounts is one way to encourage customers to buy more. Also, pricing things higher and discounting them is a way to make lower information customers think they’re getting a bargain.
But if that is a great approach, why do no wine stores do it?
Why doesn’t the supermarket do that with soda, yogurt, canned goods, pasta sauce, boxes of rice, beer, spirits, etc. etc.? [They do to some smaller extent occasionally list other items as being on sale $X for Y units, but most of the time they do that, you can still get the full discount on one unit. And it’s never just a permanent pricing strategy for any other items in the store beside wine.]
And for the number of customers who buy more bottles because they want the discount, there have got to be a lot of customers who see the pricing scheme, don’t want to buy six bottles, and don’t buy any because they see they are going to pay a much higher price. That’s usually me, by the way – if I’m tempted to buy a bottle of something, I don’t really want to pay $50 for a bottle that would be $35 or $30 if only I were buying a mixed six pack.
Anyone know how this came to be such a thing? Any agreement or disagreement with me about it being a smart retail strategy?
It’s great in grocery when they do pick 6, as the deals on $6.99 to $19.99 bottles are fine where margins are fairly static. If you are looking to get higher end wines there it may not be as good a deal. You can also put single serves in like an Underwood can that counts towards the 6.
There is a misconcenption, possibly, that wine drives any meaningful % of a stores business, so its a low impact dicount. What it accomplishes is higher bag rings and by offering deals it increases foot traffic that grocery is so conpetitive over between a Kroger, Safeway, Walmart, etc…where a ABS and Kroger only do food and don’t have a home and garden center or clothing or video department.
In this case other departments have things like slotting fees and looser regulations around promotions, BOGOs, etc…than BevAlc does along with healthier margins than BevAlc.
Some wine stores do it, and unless you’re looking for a solid 6 bottle case of something, you end up buying like 5 bottles of $9 pinot grigio to get 20-25% off the expensive bottle you’re looking for. It seems like a lot of effort and doesn’t accomplish that much except increasing the shipping and handling costs and getting people to buy wine they don’t really want.
Chris - the managers treat wine like any other commodity, which is fantastic if they have a good selection. Grocery stores make their money by moving inventory, not by markup. So if they see a $40 bottle on the shelf for a month or two, they want to free up the shelf space to get more Meiomi. And what happens is that every once in a blue moon, you actually find a great deal because the local manager knew wine or because he got lucky. And the best part is that they give you the same discount on wines that were marked down for clearance already.
It’s been a few years but I was able to score some Dunn and some Palmaz and a few other great deals for like 70% off. I once found two bottles that had been in their inventory so long, they were no longer in their system. And as luck would have it, this grocery store actually had a locked cool room that you had to enter with a store employee. I spotted a couple of Barolos and asked to go in. Within minutes, the power went out and we were locked in. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I told the guy if we were in there more than ten minutes, we’re opening something.
So they got the power on after a few minutes and I had these two bottles that regularly go for well over $100. I picked up some nothing Chardonnay or Riesling - don’t remember which, and I had six bottles. Cashier couldn’t figure out how much the two bottles were supposed to be, neither could the manager, so he said “How about $20?” and I readily agreed. And then they gave me 30% off. The manager mumbled something about the cool room costing them money, because who shops for high-end wine at Vons?
$60 for a six pack of 1986 Mouton Rothschild. I spotted it on the shelf and told the manager that $10 a bottle was absolutely not right. The shelf tag said Mouton Cadet and I told the manager of the issue. She confirmed that they had ordered and paid for Mouton Cadet and told me to help myself, so I did
7 bottles of Chartreuse in the closeout bin for $15 (?) each. I relieved them of their inventory as well
Almost every place I know that sells wine(in person and online) offers 10% off a case year round, unless the wine is already heavily discounted. Wine shops will often offer 30% for certain wines they want to move. Are you saying you have supermarkets that offer 30% off ALL wine year round(with 6 bottle purchase), or is it select wines?
In Chicago, the two biggest supermarkets are 15% off 4-6+ bottles year round, with certain promo weeks being 20-33%. All wines and the discount is taken after sale prices.
Binny’s, the biggest alcohol retailer is 10% off a case of full-priced wines.
Fascinating. I don’t know of that being a standing policy anywhere I shop frequently. Hi Time, K&L, Winex, Wine Club, Wine Solutions. What are some places I might know that have the policy you describe?
I might just not notice because I usually don’t buy a case at a time.
K&L is the only one of these I’ve shopped at before. Not sure if they do a case discount actually…
Any local wine shop should have some version of this deal, if they don’t maybe find a different shop hahah. Bigger names like Total Wine and BevMo defiantly offer this.
I’m still curious though, was the 30% discount at the supermarket year round for all wines? If so that’s a great deal
Definitely a SoCal supermarket sales strategy. Usually I just want 1 bottle and am not bothering overpaying for one. I could see if I was going to go deep where doing this would net some savings.
Pair buying the wine with a 4X Amex Gold (supermarket spend bonus) and a fuel points promo for gas and you’ll do very well.
Leon and Son has a standing six pack and case discount. They had a sale around Black Friday where you got 20% off for any 6 and people were buying a bottle of rousseau Chambertin and 5 pinot Grigio.