On Beer of the Month Clubs

Ah, yes.  The perfect gift for giving when you don't really know much about a person: The  of the month club.  There is perhaps nothing in the world that has such a gap between how good an idea it sounds and how good an idea it actually is.  Of the month clubs sound like a great idea.  Beer, coffee, wine, cheese, and even socks all delivered to your door.  The problem always comes in when you take a look at the price tag and work out the math.  A typical beer of the month club runs in the neighborhood of $40/month.  And for your $40, you get one 6-pack that would cost less than $10 at the liquor store.  Now, I understand there are certain costs involved in home delivery of beer.  Shipping 8lbs of beer across the country represents ~$10 of that.  Add in sourcing the different beers and other overhead costs and I could see the "of the month" club's costs approaching $30 for each delivery.  Add in some money for the club's profit and $40 seems to make sense.  But it looks a bit different when you look at the value of the services you receive.

It seems there are several factors at play when determining the value of your of the month club.  First, how much does the product itself cost to buy?  Second, how much would it actually cost you to physically obtain those carefully sourced items?  Third, how much is your time and effort to obtain the products worth (aka laziness quotient)?  Lastly, how much do you value variety and trying new/rare beers?  For those of you who may be more mathematically inclined (PC term for nerd?), here is a simple formula to determine if you should invest in a beer of the month club:

if: C_p+ C_o + V_s + V_v < P_m ; then, purchase

where:

C_p = Cost of product

C_o = Cost of obtaining

V_s = Value of sourcing

V_v = Value of variety

P_m = Price of membership

The real variables seem to be how lazy you are and how much value you put in variety.  While the cost of the product and the cost of shipping may vary to some extent based on your local market, the variance would be small compared to the cost of a membership.  For the other two variables it is easy enough to ask how much you would pay for these services.  How much would you pay for the time you spend on beer forums looking for people to trade with (V_s)?  How much of a premium would you pay at the store for a beer you had never seen there before, knowing that it was a one time order and would not be there again (V_v)?  They may make sense for some, but I suspect most of these are purchased as gifts by your rich uncle.