What do you prefer more in your LHBS?

[markg388]

man i'm spoiled! i happen to go to a LHBS who supplies the majority of NW microbreweries AND other homebrew stores out of their warehouse, but also has a storefront dedicated entirely to homebrewers. I get great prices (thanks to their bulkness), selection, service and my personal favorite... TURNOVER! There are other stores I go and and it's like "How long has that vienna malt been there?" And oh yeah, it's run by a brewing family with generations of experience under their belts. Their mill is the size of an SUV, there's some seriously intense brewing equipment in the back, they have homebrew parties all the time... it's just too good.

 

[92greenyj]

Man, threads like this make me realize just how lucky I am. I live a whopping 8 minutes away from Home Brew Mart ( www.homebrewmart.com ) here in San Diego. the HBS is a small division of Ballast Point Brewing Company, a local, and very good San Diego Microbrewery. The HBS is run by some of the Ballast Point brewers and they use the on site brewery there now for doing test batches and specialties having moved their main brewing operations into bigger digs to keep up with demand. The staff there is very knowledgable, helpful, and courteous. Their selection is fantastic and everything I have needed for the most part has almost always been in stock. Being in San Diego I also get the freshest vials of White Labs yeast from Home Brew Mart too, some that had even been cultured the day before I bought it! prices are usually reasonable and on par with the online retailers on most things. They even offer kegs of Ballast Point beer in cornies.

 

[amrmedic]

I have been thinking of opening up a LHBS. In my area of Florida, there are few shops. The best one is over an hour away. The other is 2 1/2 hours. They have a good selection on the website but the store is cramped, disorganized and the people who work there are pretty nasty, unhelpful and rude. Hell, they wont even help you find stuff. A new store opened up about 1/2 hour from me, but it is small and has a limited selection and the prices are way over priced. I dont mind paying a little more for an item, but double is too much. Example a 1 lb bag of belgian candi sugar on the net is 5.99, LHBS $10.
Why is it that so many LHBS have people with poor attitudes working there? Man, I know for myself, when I am even thinking of homebrewing, I get a smile on my face. So if I was running the place I would be ecstatic. I know that running a business is different than hobbiest. I have helped run a few businesses. But the basic premise of happy customers means happy owner still applies, especially in this day and age of the internet.

One of the things I like about going to the store is being able to BS with the people there about brewing. If we didnt like discussing our hobby, we wouldnt all be on this site.

I have been working on a business plan lately. A retail store and online presence is a must. Many distributors will not sell to you unless you have a brick and mortar business (no internet only shops). This is to prevent people from creating a "internet store" just to pay wholesale for their personal supplies. Many require copies of you Tax ID, business/occupational licenses, pictures of your store front, and copies of ads from papers and telephone books. And then they have a minimum purchase of at least 1000-2000 dollars, cash up front.

It is doable, but remember that you need to plan ahead and provide features that your local competitors dont.

 

[Bottenbrew]

As a former sales manager there are a couple of things I can add, attitude is overall more important than actual knowledge. Not that you want drooling idiots working for you, but knowledge about brewing can be taught, a friendly demeanor and smile cannot. If you take the plunge you want staff who is friendly and who isn't afraid of learning. Not to be negative, but a lot of times "experts" aka us avid homebrewers make the worst sales staff as many of us have our own ways to do things and are confident in our own "knowledge" on the subject, that can turn a lot of people off.

The other MUST is an online storefront. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but a simple inventory listing and pricing guide is so incredibly helpful. It is really easy to call/email a store and ask that same information, but frankly our culture is lazy and we as a whole want to be able to just look it up on the internet. This is my only complaint with my LHBS, the only info their website has is the hours they are open and directions on how to get there. As a brewer who is well past being a novice, but by no means an expert I am running into recipes and ingredients that I didn't even know existed, and when it is 3 am and I want to know if my LHBS has said ingredients, well I can't check. So I end up looking on midwestbrewing's site, and often just ordering it from them because with shipping their prices aren't much more than my LHBS. The website part can be hard, but when you want someone's money, making it easy on them is the key.

This was a total tangent that went longer than anticipated, but I have a 6 day old daughter and I am sleep deprived, so like it!

 

[ndsgr]

I'll just throw in what irritates me about my LHBSs (3, none of which are closer than 2 hours away):

-Stock fresh yeast. I don't want to forget to check and end up home with yeast 2 months beyond it's "best by" date. We once found a vial that was over a year old, didn't buy though.

-Don't be a jerk. One of the stores has an employee that treats everyone as a newbie. My entire club has complained about him, but it hasn't gotten a lot better. Please, ask if they need help or guidance, but I don't need a lecture about how to homebrew every time I go in.

-Don't take solicitors during business hours. A guy selling a soda mixing machine took precedence over me buying supplies for about 25 minutes total. I blame the HBS co-owner who was listening to him, not the soda guy.

-Using the mill can cost money, but make it reasonable. An HBS near me charges an extra $.50/lb to let you mill your own grain. If an employee does it, it ends up more than that.

-Make it look like a store, not a garage selling homebrew supplies. Also, invest in a mop. I realize it's a laid-back hobby, but come on, you're also running a business.

Thanks for the rant time! Good luck and give the ph.d a big hug!:rockin:

 

[pwndabear]

Bump with pertinent story:

As per post #1, I hate the LHBS scene here in Rochester. Nonetheless, earlier in the year when Beers of the World had a groupon of $10 for a $20 certificate, I couldn't help but by my limit of 2. I mean, I spent $20 for $40 worth of beer/brewing stuff.

I am going to brew a partial mash pale ale this weekend. Decided to use my groupons for Beers of the World but with my previous experience, I decided to call the stores 2 days ago first to find out if they actually had what I needed.

Henrietta Store: No Vienna, no honey, no flaked barley, no amarillo hops, no american ale yeast.
Brighton Store: Put on hold for 5 minutes with no explanation. Got fed up and called back saying "listen, i just need to know if you have a couple items." Was told to call back in a second. Called back in a second. Gave my list of items and waited for another 5 minutes as the guy rummaged through everything imaginable to try and find from freaking amarillo hops. He said he finally found them. No Vienna, no honey, no flaked barley. Ugh...

Then I called up Sunset Hydroponics: They had the vienna, honey, and barley and would send it to a store closer to me.

Yesterday:
Got out of work at 4 and travelled out to sunset to grab my stuff. They just threw it all together in one bag instead of separating it out for me. Great. So i picked through it and got as much flaked barley out as I could but had to fill up to the .5 lb mark again. And they had the audacity to charge me the $0.32 for topping off to where I needed to be. Then I headed out to BotW in Henrietta and indeed they had nothing there--no yeast i needed, no hops (not even cascade iirc). All I grabbed there was the pale malt and pale LME (and a beer). Went to the Brighton store next. Looked in their hop fridge for the amarillo I was promised. Guess what they didn't have... It seriously took me about 5 minutes to find someone to actually help me and when I got someone, he told me that they would not have said they had amarillo as they "can't order it anymore." Really? Come on... Had to sub out which I really did not want to do.

At about 6pm, 2 hours after leaving work, I finally got all of the ingredients needed to make one beer after travelling to 3 different stores... and even then, I still didn't find everything I need.

More and more upset with this LHBS scene.

I sent an email to a small business counseling firm yesterday to get more information on opening a store. I'm through with buying local unless it's my own stock in my own store...

 

[LarMoeCur]

Man, threads like this make me realize just how lucky I am. I live a whopping 8 minutes away from Home Brew Mart ( www.homebrewmart.com ) here in San Diego. the HBS is a small division of Ballast Point Brewing Company, a local, and very good San Diego Microbrewery. The HBS is run by some of the Ballast Point brewers and they use the on site brewery there now for doing test batches and specialties having moved their main brewing operations into bigger digs to keep up with demand. The staff there is very knowledgable, helpful, and courteous. Their selection is fantastic and everything I have needed for the most part has almost always been in stock. Being in San Diego I also get the freshest vials of White Labs yeast from Home Brew Mart too, some that had even been cultured the day before I bought it! prices are usually reasonable and on par with the online retailers on most things. They even offer kegs of Ballast Point beer in cornies.

I hate you! I lived in SD for 12 years until Uncle Sam made me move. I loved HBM do they still have .25 Ballist Point samples? Now I live HB pergitory. NO LHBS FOR YOU!

 

[GeoGirl]

As a newbie in this adventure, I would say a knowledgeable & helpful staff is of great importance, followed by a good supply of useful products/ingredients. I want some place I can go to and pick the brains of those who know the product. I can't get that from ordering on-line.

 

[conpewter]

Variety|supply of goods

Second is location.

I want to go and get whatever I need for brewing. Also very important to me is that you measure out my grains. If I come in with a recipe I don't want to go home with 3 1lb bags and 1 5lb bag of grain. I want to get my 3oz of roasted, 8 oz of carapils etc.

I never used it, but I think in house grinding is important too.

 

[bovineblitz]

Well, I live in Ithaca, and we have nothing in terms of LHBS. Ithaca Beer has a corner of their store/brewery committed to homebrew supplies, but it's completely inadequate. So yeah, any LHBS has to have STUFF. Like, if I decide I want to brew an ESB tomorrow, I should be able to get in my car and find some type of English Ale yeast at my local shop. But alas, I'm sure I would only find German lager and/or Belgian ale yeast.

I doubt the market in Ithaca could support it. It can barely support any restaurants that aren't vegan.

Plus, Ithaca is a pain to get to since there's no highways going there, I'd imagine it would affect deliveries.

 

[geneb]

The closest home brew store to me is two hours away and I have no idea what their offerings are. However, if there was one within a reasonable distance, it would be variety of goods.

I voted variety/supply of goods. If it was within a reasonable distance I wouldn't care where the location was.

 

[MeatyPortion]

I would say that I would prefer my lhbs to be dedicated to homebrewing since if they truly are then all those other ingredients (wide variety, knowledgeable, etc) will fall into place. Honestly, I don't see how someone could be passionate about homebrewing and run a crappy lhbs, I'm sure it's happened however.

 

[killian]

Every lhbs I have been to has been staffed by a bunch of f*#%ing idiots. the employees @ beers of the world are the worst bunch of a@# holes I have ever had the chance to deal with I would rather drill a F*^(ing hole in my head that listen to them try and tell me anything about beer. I was told a 200 year old brewery had closed, thanks a lot d*ckhead. Those F*cking clowns at sunset are not much better. I order 95% of my supplies online.

 

[BrewForMe]

I feel very lucky here. There are 2 LHBS within a 30 minute drive for me. As for one, it is only mediocre in all catefories. Staff that hopes you wont bother them, poor selection of supplies, high prices. However, my choice LHBS is owner operated. He is a dedicated homebrewer and very knowledgable. He only carries supplies that work and will not try to sell you something you dont need. All of his ingredients are FRESH and kits are all made in-house. All this and his prices are at par or lower than anything I can find on the internet. If this isnt reason enough to never move away, i dont know what is.

 

[rico567]

Variety first, price next. I didn't vote in the poll, because it won't let you rank & choose multiple criteria.

I am in a position of relying mostly on Internet sources for my homebrewing supplies. The only local retailer carrying homebrew stuff does do in the corner of a giant liquor store megamart. There's no one knowledgeable there, and, far worse, no way to know how long stuff sits around.
I'm fortunate, though, in that sources like Midwest and Northern Brewer have very fast shipping times to me, and they're also very good at having what I need. The worst part is shipping charges on the large stuff, like 50 lb. bags of malt. The closest "wholesaler" for those things, Mid-Country Malt, is in Fenton, MO, too far away for me to justify driving.

 

[Teromous]

Price is my first consideration. For the most part, my lhbs charges more than online stores so I don't go there too often. I just can't justify driving to the store, and paying more money for something that I can order online from my house and get cheaper. Most of the time I go there for small odds and ends that would be pointless to make an entire order online for. I buy ingredients from them sometimes when I get that "I need to brew now" feelings. I don't recall ever having problems with them, and they will always come up and offer me help.

 

[Xcorpia]

I've got one 7 minutes away from my home but its messy and extremely pricey. Pity because I would like to support local businesses but I get a better deal online with shipping and all.

 

[BeerWars]

I like my place cause they have what I want and know what they are talking about.

I pay a lot more than online - but I can drive over, get everything, and get brewing. I have yet to order online cause I want these guys to stay in business.