Lots of emotion and passion in this thread. We get it - we are all invested and enjoy the hobby.
I think at least one of the biggest problems here is the lack of local homebrew shops, which necessitates online buying and the accompanying costs for shipping. Its been a problem for several years and unfortunately its one thats continuing to grow.
Speaking as a former homebrew shop owner whose store didn’t cut it, I can tell you its a tough business. Starting with the fact that brewing is a small niche hobby. Its not like owning a pizza place where the vast majority of the population eats pizza. We won’t even talk about shipping costs these days and why they are so much but everybody knows. Elections have consequences.
A store needs a regular clientelle to survive.
Most of the stores have a club they are affiliated with. But people talk the talk and they don’t walk the walk. When I had my store my club put together pallet orders of grain and stuff on their own. I can’t tell you how many people came in with a morebeer catalog and wanted to beat me up over morebeer prices.
Thats another thing not discussed - Morebeer and the other big stores get better pricing than your local store ever can. Retail pricing is all about volume. Your local shop might be buying airlocks 100 at a time. So say their price is .53. Morebeer is buying airlocks 10,000 at a time, lets say their price is .27 each. Your local shop is selling them for .99 and not making double. Morebeer can sell for .79 and make triple.
People talk but in the end they go buy online or do pallet orders on their own and they don’t support their local shop. Thats been going on for years and years - I closed my store in 2004. Now we’re at this point where we have no local stores and here we all are complaining we now have to buy online and complaining about the prices and the shipping. The old saying - what goes around comes around.