Dressing Room Beer Sales

Selling beer in the dressing room is about trying to raise a little cash to make the financial strain of belonging to a group a little easier. We’ve all done it in the past as kids with our school, sports team or association. But we’re a little older now and we may have a problem motivating the team of thirty-something year-old men to go door-to-door selling chocolate covered almonds.

All we want to do is trim a bit off the top of our league fees and have a little left over to throw a kegger at the end of the season. Here are some observations about selling beer in the dressing room. No guarantees, just life experience and a little bit of bullshit put down on paper. Because after all, if we can help you raise some cash for a kegger, we might get invited.

Dressing Room Beer Sales

Probably the most common form of raising extra cash for adult hockey teams is beer sales in the dressing room. Hence the name beer-league. Not going too fast for you are we?

Three areas that require organizing are: a) How you initially pay for the beer b) Making sure the beer arrives c) How much you charge d) How you collect, e) How much do you bring, and f) When do you consume the cool refreshing beverage. Okay that’s five (5) but who’s counting. 6? Really? Man, even beer-drinkin’ is getting complicated these days.

Initial Beer Purchase:
Teams that have been together for numerous years will not have to worry about this initial purchase. There will be cash in the coffers to pay for the beer for the first game. Newly organized teams will have to rely on a person to shell out the cash for approximately two cases of beer. On a team of fifteen guys there is rarely a problem finding a volunteer as this unselfish act often finds a permanent spot in the heart of the rest of the team.

A rare instance will follow whereby after the first game every member of the team will ensure that every can of beer is paid for to honour the effort of the first ever beer-guy.

Making Sure The Beer Arrives:
An LTL carrier such as Canadian Freightways is typically not required, just a guy who knows his way around a liquor store, has a trunk, and doesn’t mind packing a leaky, sticky, stinky cooler.

There are two standard methods of beer delivery. The first is a rotating schedule whereby for each game a different person is assigned the cooler and is ordered to bring the allocated amount of beer. Inevitably there will be a few games during the season where the assigned beer-guy will utter the words, “I forgot,” or “I didn’t have time,” or “I picked up cider instead.” Unbeknownst to him these phrases are heard by the rest of the team, as “I don’t want to play on this team next year.”

The ideal situation is to have one member of the organization step up and volunteer for the season. The precious nectar of the gods makes it to each and every game. And the only reward this hero of the dressing room seeks is that every time he steps into the room he is greeted with a resounding chorus of “Beer Guy!”

Charging For The Beer
For as long as we’ve been going to our dad’s games, be it hockey, rugby or soccer, after the game its always been about 2 bucks a beer up here in Canada. Now that’s a great deal. Heck, belly up to a bar at your neighbourhood pub and a sleeve of lager will cost you about 5 bucks. A case of 12 cans in British Columbia will cost you 18 bucks. That’s a buck-fifty a can! For fifty cents more you get it chilled and delivered to your sweaty self in the dressing room. We say it’s about time to boost the price. Make it a whole two-fifty.

Good ol’ fashioned marketing and sales would venture that this will actually increase sales. The price increase will not deter the big drinkers to purchase any less beer, and the lightweights that have only one after the game will start to bring fives instead of Loonies and Two-nies and may purchase twice as much.

Collecting the Cash
It’s all too easy to just open up the cooler and let players help themselves and use the honour system. Let us save you trouble, the hassle, the embarrassment and a few bucks by telling you it just doesn’t work!

Teams usually try it once. A year. Some people honestly forget to pay. Some people honestly choose to forget. Whatever the case you’re gonna end up short. Beer-guy or Money-guy has to collect at the point of sale.

Unfortunately for Beer-guy or Money-guy this will mean that before he has a chance to catch his breath after the game, and seconds after he plants his ass on the dressing room bench, some sweaty man will approach him in nothing more than a jock strap and garter offering him money. Taken out of context, one, if not both of them, could get arrested for this display. Why go to the bar when you can drink with sweaty men in garters?

Beer-guy shall not be homophobic.

One method of avoiding this potentially embarrassing situation is to create beer-cards. Thick card stock, a home computer and printer, your employer’s photocopier and paper cutter and voila! Beer-Cards.

Put the team logo or a fancy design in one corner to deter counterfeiting. Along the bottom place the numbers one thru ten and pre-sell them for twenty-five bucks. Some of you (the sober ones) will remember that the price per can was raised to two-fifty.

When a beer is requested and delivered into the hands of the customer a simple black felt marker is used to cross out one of the numbers on the beer card.

For those of you that require us holding your hand throughout this process until completion, what this means is that each number on the card from one thru ten is worth one beer. Each. The number ten is not worth ten beer. It is only worth one. If you don’t follow this simple rule you will lose money. It works much the same as the cards and stamps at your local coffee shop. Only in our case there are no stamps, it’s just not manly. And there will be no free beer.