In my post from last fall - Beer Hunting in Kansas City - I mentioned Lukas Liquor in Overland Park as a great place to find some eclectic beers. Actually, the first Lukas Liquor Superstore that I visited was the one in suburban St. Louis at the corner of Manchester Rd. and Clarkson Rd. (see map). I was in the St. Louis area recently and it was toward the end of the Oktoberfest season, so I wanted to check out what Lukas Liquor had to offer. (Click here to go to Lukas Liquor - St. Louis web site.)
The Lukas Liquor in suburban Ellisville sports 24,000 square feet in floor space. They boast over 6000 different wines, 1500 different liquors and 900 different beers. Although it's been sort of out of the way for me in the past, now that we've put Focal speakers into Ultimate Electronics stores, there's an U.E. just down the road from Lukas Liquors. I had to do a training at the store one morning, then I stopped in to Lukas Liquors afterward.
I had picked up a number of good Oktoberfest beers when I was up in the Twin Cities a couple weeks earlier. (I found a great liquor/beer store up there that I'll be telling you about very soon.) But one beer that I was missing was Boulevard's Bob's 47 Oktoberfest beer. I had seen it in Kansas City, but decided to try and get it when I got back home. Well, it turned out that the local distributor for Boulevard didn't bring in the Bob's 47 this fall, for some unknown reason. It's one of my favorite Oktoberfest beers, if not my favorite.
I got into Lukas Liquor around 10:30 and started to look around at their beer selection. They had just two six packs of the Bob's 47 left. I asked one of the very helpful staff at Lukas Liquor if they had any left in back. He checked and said, "Nope, sorry. It's getting toward the end of Oktoberfest beers. I'm sure we've sold all we can get our hands on to this point."
I put the two "sixers" in the cart and started to look at some of Lukas Liquors other beers, just to see if there was anything that I couldn't live without. Now, I remember Lukas Liquors as featuring some pretty obscure breweries in the past. It was sort of exciting to go in and see something that I thought would be interesting to try. On this trip, however, I was sort of surprised that there were more "mainstream" small and craft breweries on the shelves and not some of the mysterious eclectic beers that I remember them having. They had a lot of varieties from Samuel Adams, Sierra Nevada and Leinenkugel, to name a few. But I didn't really seem to find to the more inconspicuous, interesting microbrews like they had in the past.
Another staff member came up and asked if I was looking for anything specific. I said, "I remember you guys used to have a lot of small obscure breweries that were pretty interesting. I don't see quite that many on your shelves."
He said, "Well, the economy has dictated some of that. A number of small breweries have gone under. Those that are left are having distribution issues because distributors don't want to deal with low volume sellers. And places like us are looking at maximizing our turns. We have to give more shelf space to the beers that people like and perform well. We just can't afford to have beers that don't sell on a regular basis."
It's all purely understandable. These guys aren't in the business of finding a number of no-name breweries and taking a chance that a number of people like me are going to come in on a regular basis and try something new. They need to have beers that are proven sellers.
But, still, Lukas Liquor Superstore has a wide selection of beers to choose from. You just won't find the small breweries represented like they once were at Lukas Liquor. Their prices are good, the wine selection is also top-notch, and you can be sure to be able to find something good each time you go in. I'll keep going back just to check and see what they have to offer. You never know...
Comments