There's a package for you: A full case of craft beer, via Beerjobber.com
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A new Pennsylvania-based business is shipping cases of craft beer direct from breweries around the country to consumers, including consumers here in Pennsylvania. We just can't get any beer from the several Pennsylvania brewers who've already signed on to the service.
The site, Beerjobber.com, launches on Monday, appearing to work around the three-tier system that has been in existence since the repeal of Prohibition, in which brewers sell to wholesalers, which sell to retailers, which sell to consumers.
That makes it illegal in Pennsylvania, state Liquor Control Board spokeswoman Stacey Witalec said yesterday.
Beerjobber founder and president Sean Nevins cites a little-known section of the Pennsylvania Code (Chapter 9.91) that he says for years has allowed residents to import from out of state malt or brewed beverages "for personal use only and not for sale, provided that the malt or brewed beverages are in original containers and that the tax thereon has been paid." He says Beerjobber pays the 18 cents-per-case tax to the state on customers' behalf.
Ms. Witalec says he is "mistaken," citing LCB lawyers who say Beerjobber would need an importing license to bring beer in to the state.
Mr. Nevins is going ahead without one, saying other states have similar personal exemptions, and so Beerjobber will ship to 38 states as well as the District of Columbia. As part of navigating those state laws, it doesn't deliver a beer to residents of the state where that beer is made. Nor will it deliver a beer to you -- if a brewer doesn't want it to -- if the brewer already has distributor with rights to sell it in your area. And that's why your zip code is key when you're shopping on the site.
"We want customers to be in compliance," too, Mr. Nevins says.
He says Beerjobber can offer fresher beer, and a more satisfying beer shopping experience, than many distributors and other retailers.
And because it cuts out the middlemen, and doesn't take the middle step of shipping from brewers to warehouse and then to consumers, he says it can offer reasonable prices, even though a case of beer is such a heavy and expensive item to ship.
First Published February 9, 2012 5:15 pm
