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Comment by sidewndr46 | Hacker News Reader

There's an industry piece that points out that a remarkable percentage of beer sales in the US are single cans stored cold, sold at convenience stores. Most residents of the US drive to convenience stores. Given that they are buying 1-2 cans at a time it doesn't take much in the way of inference to figure out that they are buying them to be consumed while driving.

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When I was in graduate school, my wife and I bought an affordable house in a neighborhood with a big factory next door. It was otherwise a lovely place, and so my morning jog often took me up and down the rural roads around the factory. On every road within a kilometer of the factory, the roadsides were littered with beer cans. On one particularly early morning, I was running when the late shift got out, and I watched somebody finish work (around 6am), get in their truck, pop open a beer, start driving, and then throw the can out the window as they drove past me. Given the quantity of cans on the roadside, this probably went on for years.

Refrigerated beer is not allowed in retail shops in Sweden! Tangential but interesting.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systembolaget

Their mission statement:

https://www.omsystembolaget.se/english/systembolaget-explain...

I have used the same system at home to reduce unplanned beers. Alcohol-free beers are always in the fridge waiting, and the ones with alcohol in are somewhere much warmer. On the two to three nights a week I want a refreshing malted beverage, this almost always leads to me going for the alcohol-free version.

That said, following your Wikipedia link, it seems that a different mechanic is at play:

> "No product may be favoured over another, which in practice means that the beers are not refrigerated, since otherwise all beer would have to be refrigerated which is too expensive."

Same thing with nips (1oz liquor bottles) which you see everywhere on roadsides in some parts of the US - The product basically exists to make open containers immediately disposable

I thought it existed so you could cheaply spike drinks at baseball games

The majority of litter on the sidewalks of the through streets near me is those 1oz shooters. Followed by aluminum cans (mostly beer), fast food trash (plastic cups for sauces, disposable drink cups), and then household trash that looks like it flew out of a trash can on windy days (empty boxes, plastic wrappers, a bottle of laundry detergent, etc).

Source: new year's resolution to pick up at least 1 piece of trash per dog walk.

IDK

I live in Baltimore and I see a lot of people drinking singles out of a paper bag on the corner or their stoop. I've seen it on the bus, too.

Might be more of a hood corner store thing than a rural guy in a pickup buying a beer for the drive home type thing.

Yeah, this kind of thing lead to some recriminations as a kid. Air conditioning was rare, many shops were small and had no seating, so the right thing to do was take your cold soda outside. But it the weather was so hot that it could be warm before you finished a bottle.

A few nice adults told us that it would stay cold a lot longer in a paper bag, and that a plastic bag wouldn't help. Both statements proved true…but most other adults would assume it was alcohol. They'd be scowling at us, telling us off. Sometimes we'd show the bottle, but few even need to smell it to be sure it wasn't alcohol.

Even then, most of them never started acting like they were the ones who had been in the wrong. All because some people were known to use a paper bag around beer bottles.

I'd actually be willing to take that bet against the inference. Here's my logic:

The only places that sell individual beers are convenience stores

Some of them are driven too, sure, but lots are also in city areas

Even so, people who only have a few bucks drive to the store where they can buy the beer, and drive home and drink it

If these were common cases, cops would lay in wait and nab them for open container.

did you know you can buy a single bottle taken out from a multipack at any us grocery store?

Sauce?

>If these were common cases, cops would lay in wait and nab them for open container.

I mean, they do. One of the big issues is coverage of enforcement. Here in Texas you see disparities where arrests in big cities converge on public intoxication, where in smaller cities you run into a higher ratio of open container because of cops having time to sit and watch stores.

I'm not following the logic. Why do you assume they aren't drunk at home?

Pretty much everyone in the US owns a working fridge. If you just want to get drunk at home, you just buy a case of beer and leave it in there. It's actually much cheaper to buy beer by the case in most places

Not if you're the type of poor person who buys lottery tickets, cans of beer, and cigarettes by the single.

warm beer is better

Better beer is served warm I think, but much of our beer is not that type.

Some good beer is better served warmer. Say, an imperial stout. But not all eg Pilseners are bad.

There's also the rare mulled beer which is drunk hot.

There are also other good reasons to buy a single can from the fridge. For example, I do it frequently when staying at a hotel.

Although I also assume people are drinking these beers in the car, it does seem like a bit of a leap… I mean, an alternative is that they just figure they’d rather have the beer ready right when they get home (instead of sticking it in the fridge for a bit).

But that requires planning ahead. The whole point of a convenience store is that it's a convenient place to get small quantities when you didn't plan ahead, and people are willing to pay a premium for that.

Some people don’t want to get drunk or buy a whole case.

The same reasons convenience stores sell single cigarettes, and people smoke them in their cars. Compelling cravings don't care about your externalities and don't want to wait. Lots of people don't want the people they live with to know how much they actually consume. Some people live with others who don't allow beer in the fridge for various reasons. Some have a housemate who can't be trusted around a surplus. Lots of people like to think of themselves as the kind of person who doesn't need to have a whole pack around, they just want this one and maybe another one. Depending on who you're hanging out with, sometimes it's nice to go to a BYO party and not contribute a surplus if that would get abused. And as always, who said they waited to get started until they were driving home anyway?

For some people, a beer is a once-in-a-while add-on to their purchase, a bit like a chocolate bar. I rarely drink at home but I can be tempted by a balcony beer when the weather is right.

The obvious solution is better public transit!

(Joking.. but not really.)

Speaking of public transit: bus stops and train stations are prime locations to drink your singlet can of beer and drop it on the ground, in a planter, or just leave it on a seat for someone else to move it later.

While it is not easy to drink an open container on a bus or train, drunks will consistently stop in a nearby convenience store, have a cold one before boarding, and leave it there for others to clean up. I suspect that a high percentage of convenience-store sales for singlet cans and bottles may be attributed to pedestrians and transit passengers.

Cans are actually good for this. (Much better than bottles.)

Aluminium is so comparatively high value, that it's usually in someone's interest to collect it.

Used glass is just bulky and cheap per gram.

Most drunks would rather not invite trouble by carrying around glass bottles. You don't want them near pools or jacuzzis, and you don't want to drop one on a bus or train and cause undue attention. Dropping or abandoning a metal can, by comparison, is no trouble.

And you're definitely right about recovery value. I believe, in Arizona, that glass has no redemption value at all, and so cans are the only logical choice.

There used to be a guy around here, a real character, called himself the Can Man, and he weighed about 350 lbs, and just rode the bus all the day, accompanied by an enormous bag full of cans that he would collect from every site possible. And he had songs he would sing and a little patter about himself, and whereas a can-collecting dude would normally be sort of smelly and repulsive, he managed to add to the "local color" and be somewhat endearing as he rode the bus around doing his can-collecting thing. I miss that guy!

This isn’t a correct assumption. I buy one or two singles to drink at home when I don’t feel like committing to a whole six pack.

And I buy them cold because I want them right when I get home. Not after an hour of cooling down in the fridge.

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