The Allocation Game

[stevebody]

Just wanted to get your feedback...

In thinking about our new shop, two of my advisors told me that I would need to unclench about allocations, something which I have always taken a militant stance against. Notably, one of my best distribs, a guy I spend time with socially and whose wife knows my girlfriend, told me that I would have to cough up for a couple of cases of Chateau Montelena Chard to get a chance to buy one case of Montelena Cab. I told him - and not too gently - that there is a whole lot of wine out there and that I would live without Chateau Montelena. This was in my restaurant. I don't see that we suffered at all from the lack of the Cab but my buddies think I made a mistake. We just replaced the Montelena with the Beringer Reserve and sold a ton of it. They - both of whom owned wine shops - thought I should be flexible enough to do buying programs with good wineries.

I'm not quite enough of a jughead to think that I know everything, so I'm asking you guys: My bedrock inclination is to say "If you can't sell me what I want without extorting something else, see ya!" Now, this is a different thing from the rep telling me that there just isn't enough to go around and that his larger accounts will get his supply. That I have no problem with. When I become one of his better accounts, I expect the same consideration. At first, I don't. But any sort of attempt to leverage a wineries crappy stock to get to the good stuff gets every one of my hackles up and I'm inclined to simply say that the whole catalog will not be in my shop.

Whaddaya think?