SL-023 99 Bottles of Beer in the Store

Welcome to this episode of Sightlines. I’m Bryan Roth.

So much has changed in the last few months because of COVID-19, and while many Americans across the country are returning to bars and breweries in limited numbers, sales at chain grocery, convenience, and big-box stores are still flourishing. For a variety of reasons—from efficiency to the ease or necessity of purchasing large quantities of food and drink all at once—chain stores have continued to remain a central location to find all the beer and hard seltzer people need.

But while your King Soopers, Kroger, or Wegmans stocked their shelves with some of the biggest names in beer, locally owned bottle shops had to adjust in very different ways. These are the places where you’ll typically find beer from small and nearby breweries, and special or seasonal releases you can’t buy in a Target or Walmart. Bottle shops are among the many independent businesses impacted by the coronavirus, and in this podcast, we’re going to hear from two people who explain two different ways they adjusted to the changed environment.

In a time of crisis, sometimes you respond with simplicity, and sometimes you get more complex in what you do, and how you do it. And as things slowly reopen, those survival strategies are what we’ll hear about.

This is the Sightlines podcast. Listen in.