Wine Openers

Wine buyers seeking a specific brand or label may find it harder to locate if shelf space becomes a pay-for-presentation reality.

As this space noted earlier, voters in Colorado will face the question whether to allow grocery stores to sell wine, spirits and full-strength beer.

Since that posting, a new consideration has arose.

Kroger Co., the country’s largest supermarket chain and owner of the eponymous Kroger grocery stores as well as King Soopers, City Market and others, has “proposed a plan that would let a private distributor oversee how much prominence brands get in stores,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Plus, the WSJ goes on, the alcohol companies will be asked to pay for the distributor to find shelf space. (The original article is behind the WSJ paywall but you can read a summary here in an article from Money magazine).

In other words, pay for exposure.

Already this sounds like bad news for locavores supporting small-batch producers.

Not every small winery, brewer or distiller will notice the change. Many of them are too small to use state or national distributors and many of them sell most of their product through the front door.

But for those who depend on a distributor, or simply rely on the willingness of a retailer to find room on a shelf, the Kroger proposal is bad news.

Finding a place to sell small-batch wine, beer and spirits already is tough; just ask the winemakers, distillers and brewers who make weekly rounds of stores, making sure they haven’t lost shelf space to large distributors also trying to find space for their products.

Competing for premium shelf space just got harder, as writer W. Blake Grey assets here, against national distributors who can pay for better positioning.