yup such demand is typically a short term surged demand, so their number crunching might have showed that increase production (from other similar lines that can do so, so they don't actually need new lines) actually could bring in more profits than reducing supply and increase price would

[–] Obituarykidney@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

The hand sanitizer was earning the distilleries less money, they didn't have to do that. A lot of them also donated to the hospitals and people in charge of doing the covid tests before we had the at home ones. The toilet paper was capitalism as usual though.

[–] TheFogan@programming.dev 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

On the whole, while at the start of Covid 19 alchohol sales went up, it overall decreased (most likely due to the lack of social drinking, and bars), Plus marketing etc... "Hey we did our part to help out in this time of need, become a loyal customer". Would take a lot more analysis to see if it actually made less money, or if they were making less money so it made sense to use their unneeded capacity to sell a normally less profitable item and possibly earn some long term good PR.

[–] Obituarykidney@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

Oh I don't disagree that a lot of the bigger and corporate owned distilleries were doing it for the marketing, booze is a billion dollar industry.

When covid hit though, I was manager of a whisky bar and in close contact with a lot of the small batch/craft distilleries around Australia, and knew a lot of the distillers personally. The ones I know of that did switch to hand sanitizer were so small that it was literally an Instagram post to explain why their products weren't currently available. That was the extent of the marketing. They were literally just producing enough to give a weekly supply to the local hospitals so they didn't run out entirely before supply was back up.

[–] HoneyMustardGas@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I never knew about the hand sanitizer thing.