| Hello Free Rangers, Since there is going to be a fairly involved narrative (which does conclude with a cost sale), let’s start with this week’s FREE in-store tasting, so as not to get this lost in the shuffle. This Thursday (5-7pm), our buddy Myles will be here in the shop pouring you FREE tastes of Licence IV Blanc and Rosé in single serving cans, as well as a delicious but little known proper red Burgundy. Monthelie-Douhairet-Porcheret Monthelie 2018 is a cumbersome mouthful of a name, but a subtle, broad, dry mouthful of juice. All three of the above (pictured below) are delicious, very high quality per dollar, and all 10% off, Thursday only! *** |
| Now, here’s the story: They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. So, let’s talk about Journeyman Distilling and what they pulled on us. While I do like their products, especially the (naturally) flavored cherry and fig whiskeys, I was a little wary of the label to begin with as they have some unfortunately branded bottles based on the fact that they live in an old corset factory, and somebody thought it a good idea to make “Corsets, Whips and Whiskey” (which would be slightly less terrible with an Oxford comma) featuring a line drawing of a dancer smiling big and kicking *too* high. Needless to say, we did not buy that one. That being said, the reason we decided to pick them up was that they’re doing everything right in a quality per dollar sort of way: all in-house spirits distilled from organic ingredients. In fact, there’s a bottle of Field Rye on my bar at home right now. The details of our ill-fated in-store tasting with them are well documented in the e-mail I sent to Journeyman’s national sales manager (and cc’d their home office), so here’s what that looked like: <——————> Kevin, “So sorry,” doesn’t begin to cut it. We arranged an in-store tasting with you, we re-confirmed it, then days later you expressed concern about making the start time, and I told you that if you wanted to make sure we had the sample bottles ahead of time, I’d cover for you until you could arrive. Since that didn’t happen, and I heard nothing else from you, I assumed you’d be here as scheduled. Then after you were already an hour late (and I had turned away a number of customers who came to taste), I called and you sounded surprised to hear from me, and immediately volunteered that you had “called the wrong store” to reschedule the tasting. There are so many things wrong with this moment that it’s difficult to line them all up. When we schedule an in-store tasting, we send out an e-mail to 5,000 people, we talk it up all week, we do social media, we print up signs, and we physically rearrange the shop to create a welcoming tasting space. When we tell our people that we have a scheduled event, it happens. I’m sorry that your word doesn’t mean to you what mine does to me, but the result is that you wasted my time, and made me look like a schmuck and a liar, and yours was our first canceled event in years. On top of this, we just re-started our in-store tasting program five weeks ago, and it looks like we’ll have to curb it again soon, so you actively squandered one of our very few opportunities to show new products en masse this year. That you thought is was okay to cancel on the day of the event is completely unacceptable and profoundly unprofessional. That you called the wrong shop and thought you had spoken to me is deeply insultingly and the definition of incompetent. That you thought you could no-show on Thursday and get a new in-store tasting opportunity on Friday is comical. And on top of that, you wanted me to do more social media work so that you could make up for your colossal failure? Wow man, I really don’t know what else to say besides that we simply do not do business with people who pull this kind of crap, and you really thought a “my bad” would suffice? At this point, if you’d like us to even consider keeping your products on our shelves, you need to make an appointment, come down here, and apologize like someone who comprehends the weight of his transgressions. Otherwise, the above will be the subject of our next e-mail blast, we’ll close-out all Journeyman bottles at cost, and never think about any of you ever again. Most sincerely, Jack <——————> To his credit, Kevin did make an appointment, and was on time to the minute, but what he proudly thought would make amends simply didn’t come close to compensating for lost time, effort, and revenue (#OxfordComma). So, I told him that I couldn’t guarantee his products’ place in our shop. And in minor retraction/correction to the above note, we have had one other event canceled in the last five years, which was when a rep called in sick with covid, one fateful March day, and we abruptly ended the in-store tasting program for over a year, thus concluding the before time. I believe Kevin to be genuinely sorry (for whatever that’s worth), and that some kind of *honest* mistake was made, but this doesn’t change the fact that we did the work which usually sells 1-4 cases of whiskey, and zero of those sales occurred. The long and short of it is that this business would have slightly more money today if we had never met, and the opportunity cost of that tasting day is irrecoverable. The fixes that were offered still require us to do the work of selling bottles that should have already been converted into cash (during one of our slowest months in the last six or seven years). And the only way to extract further value from this negative cashflow situation was as content, hence the above. Besides, it just seemed like compelling prose that deserved a larger audience, no? I bitch a lot, but I love what I do, or I wouldn’t do it. However, I’m not standing here six days a week to lose money. And as I’m not a man to make idle threats, we are in fact closing out all 4 Journeyman Whiskeys we picked up for the shop, at wholesale cost, and anybody who buys one gets one vote as to whether or not we continue to stock them here at Free Range (#democracy). We have 3 of the 4 Journeyman whiskeys available for tasting anytime this week, just ask in the shop. The t-shirts (and hat) are fair game to anybody who buys a bottle. And if said bottles don’t sell out at the lowest price at which they’ll ever be offered, well, then the market has spoken (#FreeMarketCapitalism). * For all my snark, I am not deliberately glorifying capitalism, which in its unchecked form is profoundly corrosive (#ChardonnaySocialist). (!) Click here for the Journeyman cost sale page (!) Getting by is the new kicking ass, Jack Proprietor Free Range Wine & Spirits P.S. Free Range E-mail Archive |
