Ending the Three-Tier System: A New Resource
It's hard to believe this hasn't existed until now
If you do a Google search on “Three-Tier System” what you mostly come across are links to glowing reviews of this archaic (it’s 90 years old now) way of regulating the distribution of alcohol in the United States. Most of what you find will be fawning and glowing reviews and explanations of the system provided by wholesalers and regulatory bodies.
It’s time to change this. It’s time to provide consumers and the alcohol trade with a resource that tells the honest story of the three-tier system, how it harms nearly every part of the alcohol industry (with one exception), and how consumers are harmed by its existence.
Enter: FERMENTING CHANGE: http://www.three-tiersystem.com
What readers will find is an easy-to-understand explanation of what the three-tier system is, how it harms the industry and consumers, an explanation of why it needs to be dismantled, a proposal for reform, and other resources to dig down further.
It is shocking, disappointing, and really unsurprising that this kind of web resource did not exist before today. Outside of wholesalers and a few huge producers and importers, there is zero love for the three-tier system in the alcohol trade. They understand it restricts producers’ access to markets, prevents retailers and restaurants from diversifying their offerings, and prevents consumers from accessing hundreds of thousands of products they want.
Yet despite this general loathing for the three-tier system with its legal mandate that producers sell to wholesalers and retailers only buy from wholesalers, members of the trade rarely take a forceful public stance on the flaws in the system. This isn’t because they can’t articulate them. It’s because most producers and retailers can’t afford to raise the ire of the wholesalers with whom the three-tier system requires them to work.
What’s really needed is a public Google Doc where members of the alcohol trade could anonymously describe their various encounters with wholesalers that included unethical pressure put on them, failures of the wholesalers to keep their promises and examples of the problems associated with being forced by the three-tier system to work with wholesalers. I suspect hundreds of entries would appear—if entries could be entered anonymously!
The goal of the “Fermenting Change: Ending the Three-Tier System” website is to give folks a place to point people who could use a balanced explanation of this form of alcohol regulation. Additionally, my hope is that the alternative regulatory structure laid out on the site might inspire the right people.
More will be added to the site in the near future. For example, I want to include a set of dynamic links to all current bills in states that seek to loosen the restrictions linked to the three-tier system with updates on the latest action taken on the bills.
This is one website; one small addition to the three-tier literature. But perhaps it can provide balance to the propaganda that too often passes for information on this key aspect of alcohol regulation in the United States.
It goes without saying, if you, my readers, were inclined to push the new website out via social media or by forwarding this email to friends, it would help spread the word.