Walmart and Beer Sales

Wal-Mart Sells Coors About at Cost to Be Largest Beer Seller

So, few things that are interesting from this article - wow Walmart is really being aggressive and when you figure breakage and other parts of the operation, they are losing money on their beer sales. Now to their point - beer does pull in customers and may very well be an effective loss leader for them, but still 0.6% markup?

But.. hidden deep in the depths of that article was an interesting stat: Walmart has doubled the number of beer buyers they have for the nation from 6 to 12. That's right.. for the whole company - the world's largest retailer - has exactly 12 beer buyers. I'm fairly certain that the Whole Foods of NE LA have more than 12 beer buyers.

Guess that means we aren't going to see Walmart moving hyperlocal any time soon!

Also, curiously, beer prices are super tightly regulated - which means, if I'm right about this: Walmart can't use their usual leverage to get price concessions from breweries. (I know this is true about keg prices, don't know about case and six pack sales). Still, I don't know how much force you could apply to a Molson Coors or ABI when their usual profit per unit is somewhere in the slim to supermodel slim. Seriously, go look at the numbers -the way those guys make their money is sheer volume - which is why they focus on a product that is palatable to as many drinkers as possible. Economics is a brutal tastemaker!