Bootlegging
There was a time and place when Cantillon wasn't as highly sought after. At the time, Shelton Bros pulled their distribution from our state. So what we use to do is buy it from a neighboring state. He had a good distributor friend that's territory was very close to that state. We would pay him to buy cases and cases of Cantillon and bring it with him on our next truck order. Same thing for other beers. If we knew some people were traveling we would just ask them to pick us up cases and we would cash them out at the store. KBS, Breakfast Stout, Nugget Nectar, Hop Wallop, Gumball Head, and things like that we would run through. We were buying at retail, so the markup was pretty substantial. If we were getting it a 10.99, we would mark it up to 15.99ish. If it was something like Breakfast Stout it would probably have been 2x retail. But most of our clients were well off. And the stuff we were providing would have been at closest 3 hours away.
The Cantillon we would keep on the shelf. Pretty much no one at the time knew what it was, even ABC. It was like our special beer. We probably split 1 a week on lunch breaks. I can't tell you how many Fou' Founes we drank in the cooler. ****. If only I knew at the time.
The owners were oblivious to what we were doing. We were a monster store. All they knew is we would ask for money and it would be returned 2x what we took in the matter of a weekend, so they didn't give a ****.
Our back room was ****ing stupid. We had vintage Drie, Dark Lord verticals, old Fantomes, older lambic we were saving for ourselves, tons of ****. It was all on a top shelf, pushed to the back with shitty cheap wine boxes in front of them. That is also where we kept our rare bourbon and wine. Stuff we wanted to buy, but could only afford a bottle or so a week. If you were a regular at our store and were cool, you knew to ask if there was anything new. I would tell them hold up, go into the back and bring them out something. They would never even ask the price. They were just so happy we had things no one else did. We were also good at spotting BAs from a mile away. You just start talking to them and you can tell. These dudes would start out with maybe 2 six packs in their cart. By the time I was done with them, they'd be $200 deep. "Dude, you need to check this out. It's got such and such rating on BA, ad nauseam with details." They would 90% of the time buy whatever I sold them. Then I would tell them to hold up, disappear in the back and come back with a limited release bootle. Like a 2 year old Dark Lord or something. Boom, next day dude has written a 8 paragraph 5/5 rating on BA.
Sadly the last of the old boys is gone and the store has changed ownership 2-3 times. So no more gems.