In his playful anthem “Sorry You’re Sick,” iconic L.A. street musician Ted Hawkins asks “What do you want from the liquor store? Somethin’ sour or somethin’ sweet?” For a lot of budget-conscious imbibers, the answer is probably a third adjective: “Somethin’ affordable.” If you’re wine-shopping on a budget, avoid making any wine-buying mistakes and hit the liquor store during a reset period to get the most bang for your buck.
This pro tip comes from Tasting Table’s own Simon Feisthauer Fournet, a wine expert whose family owns a winemaking business in France. As he shared in his roundup of 15 tricks to save money at the liquor store, “[M]ost major suppliers end their fiscal years in December or March. In the final weeks of these periods, sales reps often offer aggressive deals to reach annual targets. Similarly, seasonal portfolio transitions (winter to spring in March, summer to fall in September) naturally create inventory reduction needs.”
When a store decides to hold a reset, the process involves rearranging displays to highlight certain products, considering current inventory, and potentially changing that inventory. It’s all about making data-driven decisions to boost sales, typically centered around adjusting to same-store sales data and larger, blooming industry trends (i.e. skin contact aka orange wine is in right now). Retailers from supermarkets to clothing stores conduct resets, but with the sempiternal onslaught of new product launches — from small artisanal wineries to celebrity-backed spirits brands — the liquor store is an arena marked by near-constant innovation.
Liquor stores conduct resets to make room for what’s selling
Up-to-date shelf sets are crucial for wine sellers, as sales figures directly depend on maximizing their limited shelf real estate to reflect current consumer demand. “Every year we do two resets in beer — a larger spring assortment review and a mid-to-minor tweak in the fall,” Jon Manuyag, director of marketing at Oregon’s Plaid Pantry convenience store chain, tells NACS Magazine. “The fall reset is typically used as an indicator of how new packages that were introduced in the spring are performing and if they warrant an expansion.” These full store resets are often a multi-week process, and most stores can’t shutter for that long. For cost efficiency, these reset periods often occur during business hours – which is when you should hit the wine shop to get the best price.
By shopping during these industry transition times, shoppers can score their go-to products at lower price points (20% to 30% below average, according to Feisthauer Fournet), as stores look to refresh their inventory. Depending on which bottles are marked down, you could even branch out to different brands than you normally might try, if these are being worked out of the rotation and heavily discounted. Ask the store manager when these periods are scheduled to happen (a few repeat visits and a friendly face are all it takes to establish rapport), then plan to buy in bulk when the markdowns arrive. For more ways to save money, here are 15 cheap bottles of wine that taste expensive.
