My take on it.
40000 growlers? Really? Initially only 3 stores, but lets give them the benefit of the doubt, and say they started with 4 stores.....that's 10000 growlers per store.....really? They probably wouldn't need 40k growlers if every corporate store in the province had taps. Just shear stupidity to buy that many for a test run.
My problem with it was that ANBL had a perfect opportunity to make good on their 10000L blunder, by promoting the micro breweries from around the province.
I mean when it opened, here in Fredericton we had a Picaroons tap, Shocktop, and I don't recall the 3rd, it was at least from a smaller micro brewery.
OK, right off the top....Labatts doesn't need help selling Shock Top, none of the 3 taps should be a mainstream product for one of the big 3 macro beer companies.
Picaroons....ok, a case can be made as they are the biggest micro in Fredericton...but....they have their own brewtique downtown, with 6 taps of their own....do they really need another at the Prospect St. store? Give them a tap in Moncton or SJ, where maybe their beer on tap isn't as readily available for purchase to take home. Ditto for Pumphouse, instead of a Moncton tap, give them a SJ or Freddy tap.
So rather than help promote the smaller micros, they choose to have stuff that is readily available.
How about stuff from Railcar, Big Axe (one of theirs was on once.....once), Petit Sault, etc, etc.
I don't get up to the Bristol area much, and I likely wouldn't make a special trip up just to get a growler of Railcar where I haven't tried it. However if it was on tap in Freddy where I could grab a growler of their brew locally, I might then make the effort to drive up to Bristol to see what else I could get. Win, win situation for both ANBL and the brewer.
As well, why only pour hours Thu, Fri, & Sat? There are enough staff on hand that if someone should come by on a Monday, that they could fill a growler. One of the people that stock the shelves, or the product advisor could do that at any time, why only limit pours to 3 days?
ANBL has a good idea, just piss poor execution and management.
I was into a beer store on Long Island over the summer. Typical bottle shop, lots of generic, and lots of products from smaller micro breweries, but what they also had was a walk in cooler that had 10-12 tap handles on the outside of it, that they had set up for growler fills from breweries from around the country (no Bud lite on tap as AB doesn't need the help pushing it), thought it was a great idea, but ANBL is making a mockery out of the growler trial....then again, I suppose we shouldn't really be surprised!
