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| - What a disaster this place is. I have never had a more frustrating experience in a liquor store.
Here's the story: I have recently moved to Phoenix and, based on recommendations from Yelp, went to Top's with an eye towards setting up my home bar in Phoenix. As some background, my wife and I are very into cocktails and usually stock around 50-60 bottles in our house at any given time. I walked into the store with my shopping list on my iPhone, thinking that this would make everything smooth and easy. How naive!
The first thing you see upon entering Top's is a floor-to-ceiling stack of empty beer cases that runs most of the length of the store (and they probably have 14 foot ceilings). Behind this are narrow and cramped aisles packed with beer, wine, and liquor. This messy appearance generally speaks to the state of Top's.
Before getting to my experience, I will say this for Top's: their beer selection is as advertised. It's crazy thorough and truly impressive. The problem is, I wasn't looking for beer. We were here for a lot of hard liquor. After wandering around the store for probably five minutes, we finally found the two rows where the liquor was stored. Immediately, I know something was wrong.
On the aisle that stores things like gin, rum, and liqueurs, the shelves are stacked high and thick, often three bottles deep, with different products behind and on top of one another. Top's only stocks one bottle at a time of many products and just piles bottles up on top of each other as they come in! The problem with this practice is that there's no logic to the way in which things are stacked or stocked. For instance, I noticed at least 12 different kinds of arak, a Lebanese anise liqueur similar to absinthe, but they did not have any maraschino liqueur, an important cocktail ingredient. Moreover, all of these bottles of arak (which I'm presuming, judging by the thick coat of dust, are not top sellers) were piled on top of things like Campari and Amaro Nonino, which are fairly popular and kind of expensive (Nonino is usually a $55 bottle). Similarly, the store had probably 8 different kinds of Central European plum brandy but none of the other fairly common ingredients I was looking for (like Chartreuse, for instance).
In any case, after being lost in Top's, we finally got the attention of the clerk. While helpful and friendly, he was clueless about the location of most of the things I was looking for. He suggested we talk to the manager, instead. This moment is where our visit to Top's really went pear-shaped. While we had been randomly wandering around in the store, two "business men" who had "just opened an office nearby" had been looking for a bottle of Glenlivet 21 year (we overheard their conversation). The manager was attempting to help them find it in all the clutter (the scotch selection at Top's is amazing, but you wouldn't know it. For instance, I found a $50 bottle of Glenrothes shoved behind a display case of whipped-cream flavored vodka). When it was finally apparent Top's didn't have the bottle they wanted, the two business men suggested that Top's should order the bottle and they "might" come back and buy it.
While this is all happening the clerk finally gets the manager's attention. I explain that I'm new in town and looking to restock my bar. I show him the list of 30 or so bottles on my iPhone. He tells me that he's never heard of half of them and then points to the two or three that are on top of the mess. When I ask about Chartreuse, which my wife and I were both hoping to find, he says "yeah, we usually only stock one bottle of that at at time, as it's not a big seller. I guess we sold it." Then he literally turns around and walks off to go help the two business men who kept saying how they "might" come back and buy this one bottle of scotch. Meanwhile, the manager did not seem interested in trying to order me the two bottles of Chartreuse (green and yellow) and the Luxardo Maraschino I was looking for.
I want to give you the math to explain why I feel so slighted by my treatment at this store. A bottle of Glenlivet 21 year retails for $130. I have since filled out my shopping list at Total Wine and the total bill came to $600. So, instead of dealing with someone was looking to spend a large amount of money and would have been a regular and excited customer, their manager wanted to help out two people who might come back for a single bottle of scotch.
I think this is partly chalked up to the fact that, despite being a "liquor" store, Top's is more interested in selling high-proof vodka to ASU students, craft beer, and unusual single-malt scotch. If you are in the market, as I was, for bar staples, I would strongly recommend shopping somewhere else.
Actually, given the generally chaos of the store's inventory (which as far as I can tell is not managed by computer) and shelf organization, I wouldn't recommend coming here at all.
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