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FTC sues nation's largest alcohol distributor, alleging pricing discrimination
(www.consumeraffairs.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2024
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While bulk pricing is legal, distributors are legally mandated to provide the same pricing models to all qualified customers. However, the US hasn't enforced these laws in a long time. Theoretically Walmart and Mom and Pop's Grocery should be able to place the same size order for the same price but many big box stores started bullying the distributors for special secret pricing and then forbade them from offering those prices to anyone else.
Yes, that's the trick. If you order in bulk, everyone doing the same bulk order should get the same pricing.
Where it starts to get tricky is how you calculate "bulk".
Back when I worked a manufacturing gig, there were two types of bulk orders.
Lets say you wanted 5 million envelopes, you got a bulk price on that, and everyone buying 5 million got the same bulk price.
BUT -
Clients were ranked based on overall spend and got additional discounts.
So a client buying 5 million envelopes would get a better deal if they also bought 5 million custom forms vs. just the envelopes alone. Or if this was their 3rd order of 5 million vs. their first.
Applying this to liquor distribution, I could see it working the same way. A mom and pop store buying 50 bottles of Jack is going to pay the same per bottle as anyone else buying 50 bottles of Jack.
But a bigger retailer, buying 50 bottles of Jack + 50 bottles of Captain Morgan + 50 bottles of Maker's Mark + 50 bottles of Crown Royal + 50 bottles of Grand Marnier + 50 bottles of Absolut is going to get a better per bottle deal than the mom and pop store. (I dunno, those are all the liquor brands I could come up with off the top of my head. :)