Thirsty Thursday Eve - North Carolina Monthly Liquor Sales
As I mentioned last month, North Carolina has some super weird liquor laws and pricing policies. However, the monthly scheduling means that I have incentive to try something new each month. Specifically, true to the form of the economic alcoholic, I can pick up one of the cheapest sale items and see how bad it is.
So finding the monthly sale items in North Carolina liquor stores is pretty easy. You go to this site, select the current month in the “Month” drop down list, and select Microsoft Excel in the “File Type” drop down list. Then hit “Create Report.” You could also select PDF, but spreadsheets are the superior file type. Fight me.
This is where it gets a little funky. For whatever reason, the spreadsheet is in this really weird format, where the headers are vertically merged and there are two empty columns between each populated column. I have no idea why the formatting is so wonky, Google Sheets won’t sort the price columns in the original state. You have to do a little data manipulation to get the sorts working.
I upload the spreadsheet to Google Sheets, but I’m sure the steps would more or less be the same for Microsoft Excel. Select rows 1-10 and delete them. It wipes out the header information, but you can note which column is which or compare the edited spreadsheet against the original once you finish with it. The field I care about “Reduced Retail Price in [Month]” which is in column W. Select columns U-W, hit the drop down arrow next to the merge button, and merge horizontally. I’m not sure why, but the column will not sort without merging those three columns, and it doesn’t provide any error message or reason why.
Press the drop down arrow for column W and sort ascending. If you did everything right, the spreadsheet should indeed sort correctly. The top row should then contain the cheapest item after the discount is applied. Alternatively, you could sort descending and see just how many bottles of liquor you can’t afford. If anyone knows why the North Carolina Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission formats their spreadsheets like that, please let me know. It blows my mind.
Now you have a list of every bottle of liquor on sale in North Carolina for the given month, sorted by price after discount. Do with that what you will. I personally use it to see what’s cheap this month, and determine if I want to pick up a bottle of something I haven’t tried, or something I have tried and I really like. The prices for the cheapest items in the list tend to hover around $7 or $8 for a fifth.
I discovered this in September. Fortunately, NC ABC Commission provides monthly price reduction reports all the way back to February 2002. One could go back nearly two decades for price information. I didn’t, but one could. For the sake of knowledge, though, I did check on the last few months of 2020.
From what I can tell, they have a pretty decent selection of new things on sale each month. In just the months of August to December, only two spirits were repeated, and they only appeared two times each. What I have is the subset of items that were under $10 after the discount, and that still leaves at least three or four options each month. And note, the Christian Brothers Apple was discounted to $9.50 during August and $8.50 during November. So apparently the discount is not consistent over time.
I’ll have to check my local liquor store to see if they have any of these options available, and how the price compares. If the prices are similar, though, I’ll have a hard time turning down some of these. There is an ABC store super close to my office, and it takes nearly no time to run by on my lunch break or as I head toward home. Plus, this gives me a short list of things to try for cheap, instead of my normal tactic of wandering aimlessly around a liquor store until something catches my eye.
Expect some of these spirits in upcoming Thirsty Thursday Eve installments. Sub $10 for a fifth of something new, I’m not out much if it sucks, and I might just find a new favorite. Stay tuned.
So finding the monthly sale items in North Carolina liquor stores is pretty easy. You go to this site, select the current month in the “Month” drop down list, and select Microsoft Excel in the “File Type” drop down list. Then hit “Create Report.” You could also select PDF, but spreadsheets are the superior file type. Fight me.
This is where it gets a little funky. For whatever reason, the spreadsheet is in this really weird format, where the headers are vertically merged and there are two empty columns between each populated column. I have no idea why the formatting is so wonky, Google Sheets won’t sort the price columns in the original state. You have to do a little data manipulation to get the sorts working.
I upload the spreadsheet to Google Sheets, but I’m sure the steps would more or less be the same for Microsoft Excel. Select rows 1-10 and delete them. It wipes out the header information, but you can note which column is which or compare the edited spreadsheet against the original once you finish with it. The field I care about “Reduced Retail Price in [Month]” which is in column W. Select columns U-W, hit the drop down arrow next to the merge button, and merge horizontally. I’m not sure why, but the column will not sort without merging those three columns, and it doesn’t provide any error message or reason why.
Press the drop down arrow for column W and sort ascending. If you did everything right, the spreadsheet should indeed sort correctly. The top row should then contain the cheapest item after the discount is applied. Alternatively, you could sort descending and see just how many bottles of liquor you can’t afford. If anyone knows why the North Carolina Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission formats their spreadsheets like that, please let me know. It blows my mind.
Now you have a list of every bottle of liquor on sale in North Carolina for the given month, sorted by price after discount. Do with that what you will. I personally use it to see what’s cheap this month, and determine if I want to pick up a bottle of something I haven’t tried, or something I have tried and I really like. The prices for the cheapest items in the list tend to hover around $7 or $8 for a fifth.
I discovered this in September. Fortunately, NC ABC Commission provides monthly price reduction reports all the way back to February 2002. One could go back nearly two decades for price information. I didn’t, but one could. For the sake of knowledge, though, I did check on the last few months of 2020.
From what I can tell, they have a pretty decent selection of new things on sale each month. In just the months of August to December, only two spirits were repeated, and they only appeared two times each. What I have is the subset of items that were under $10 after the discount, and that still leaves at least three or four options each month. And note, the Christian Brothers Apple was discounted to $9.50 during August and $8.50 during November. So apparently the discount is not consistent over time.
I’ll have to check my local liquor store to see if they have any of these options available, and how the price compares. If the prices are similar, though, I’ll have a hard time turning down some of these. There is an ABC store super close to my office, and it takes nearly no time to run by on my lunch break or as I head toward home. Plus, this gives me a short list of things to try for cheap, instead of my normal tactic of wandering aimlessly around a liquor store until something catches my eye.
Expect some of these spirits in upcoming Thirsty Thursday Eve installments. Sub $10 for a fifth of something new, I’m not out much if it sucks, and I might just find a new favorite. Stay tuned.
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