As the adult beverage field specialist for Kroger’s Louisville division, Chris Blandford oversees beer, wine, and spirits for roughly 114 grocery stores and 58 stand-alone liquor stores throughout Kentucky, Southern Indiana, and Southern Illinois. “Everything from buying to helping with pricing, inventory and merchandising, stocking, and events — a little bit of everything,” he said.
In addition to appearances at events including Bourbon and Beyond and the Crave Food and Music festival, Blandford launched the Firkin Podcast in 2023, where he interviews distillers, chefs, bartenders, entrepreneurs, and others about the spirits industry. He also co-founded and curates the Ultimate Bourbon Auction to End Hunger.
Business Lexington caught up with Blandford on a recent morning — he was headed to the James B. Beam Distilling Co. to select several barrels of Knob Creek for Kroger stores later that day — to discuss the bourbon business, staying ahead of trends, and why supply may be catching up with demand.
After years of growth where demand continued to outpace supply for certain bourbons, some recent reports indicate a slowdown. What are you seeing?
I think the bourbon landscape is extremely healthy. I read something the other day where people were like, “Oh, bourbon is down,” but is it really down, or did COVID spur on something where distillers were already straining to get product onto the shelf and make people want it even more? I don’t want to say on the regular, but we are starting to see case stacks of items like Buffalo Trace and Henry McKenna hit the floors again. This is what everybody wanted five or so years ago, and now we’re trying to give it to them.
I got into this, unknowingly, right at the beginning of the bourbon boom. We had probably more than any other state on the shelves, but it wasn’t a huge commodity. Now it’s just massive. In certain stores, you can walk in and be overwhelmed with the amount of bourbon choices that you have. It was maybe 10 years or so ago I was in a seminar with [Buffalo Trace master distiller] Harlan Wheatley and he said, ‘I know you guys want everything right now, but eventually we’re going to get to a point where I’m going to be asking you to take it,’ and I think we are getting to this point. We’re seeing a lot more stuff hit the shelves, and I could not be happier about it.
How does forecasting factor into your job and keeping the shelves stocked with what people want?
That is the hardest question. I’ll look at how the market is trending, I read all the newsletters and I do my own research online and just seeing what people are drinking, but it’s tough. I mean, who would have thought that seltzers and RTDs [ready-to-drink cocktails] would take off like they have?
What is spurring everything for me right now is making sure that the price point is right for the customer. There’s so much overwhelming choice now — and so many great bottles on the shelf — but when we get into those high price point bottles, you’re talking about a different customer base. I think a lot of my Kroger customers want to be able to get the bottle they want at a reasonable price. We also need to make sure that distillers have the production to be able to keep their items in stock. We have a large market here in Kentucky. If I’m going to give something new a try, I don’t want to bring in just 15 or 20 cases and hope. I need to make sure that we can supply customers if it takes off and everybody wants it.
How do barrel picks factor in and what’s the scope of Kroger’s single-barrel program?
The single-barrel program is an absolute blast. I hand select probably 80 to 90 percent of the single barrels that you see throughout Kentucky and in some of the other states, as well. We’ll take all those single barrels and split them up among the entire state. We send everything across the state, from Russell Springs to Middletown to Beaumont to Georgetown — everyone will see single barrels of some type. I always pick blind. I don’t want to know anything about the bourbon because that information will absolutely sway me. I pick purely on taste, and I’ll write down my notes as I’m going through, but I’ll save those until the end because I also don’t want to influence any of the other people who are tasting with me that day. Everybody in the room gets a vote. If there’s a barrel that’s different and strikes my fancy, I might give it my “Chris’ Pick” logo, but if the majority picks something else, I’m going with the majority because that’s the public.
And you’ve found some ways to do good with bourbon?
I started the Ultimate Bourbon Auction to End Hunger years back, and we’ve so far raised over a million dollars for Dare to Care in Louisville and God’s Pantry in Lexington. Kroger has given me this amazing runway to be able to take a lot of these allocated bourbons — Kroger pays for every single one of those — and auction them off during this amazing auction that happens in November right around Black Friday. We raised $388,000 last year, just from whiskey. Isn’t that wild? There are a lot of problems in the world, but food shouldn’t be one of them. No one should go to bed hungry.