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Dubious achievement

The American magazine, Esquire, has an annual issue that it devotes to the year’s dubious achievements.

Last week’s story in The Royal Gazette about Court Street Liquors receiving an award for being the top-selling Carlsberg outlet in the world falls squarely into that category. Some will have seen this story as a great example of entrepreneurship, of a businessman recognising his market and serving it very successfully. In this case, owner Roderick Nesbitt’s market is sales of single bottles of beer. And he certainly sells a lot of them — about 12,000 Elephant beers a month or 400 bottles a day. Mr. Smith notes wryly that he does not sell a lot of wine from his location — he leaves that to the Front Street stores.

That is important because there are others who profess to be disturbed by this story, and see it as an indictment of Bermuda society. Bermudians drink too much and the beer they drink is too strong, the thinking goes.

On top of that, these chilled, single bottles of beer are being bought all day and it’s a fairly safe bet that many of them end up on the side of the road and not in a trash can, thus contributing to the Island’s litter problem.

That is all true, but care should be taken before anyone decides to condemn Mr. Nesbitt, who actually sells more Heinekens than he does Elephants. The truth is that Bermudians from all walks of life drink too much. On Court Street it may be Heinekens or Elephants, on Front Street it is probably some aged single malt Scotch or expensive bottle of wine.

The only difference is in the kind of poison they choose. The lesson that needs to be learned from Mr. Nesbitt’s success is not that people buy too many single bottles of beer, but that moderation is the best way to go.