Preventing Breakage at Joe Canal's

If I had a nickel for every time a customer said "what a waste" or asked "do you have a straw?" when they saw a broken bottle pooling on the floor, I'd be a wealthy woman. It's a fact of life here at Joe Canal's. When you are surrounded by liquid in glass containers, broken bottles are going to happen.... a lot. It happens to some of us so often that we get nicknames from our colleagues such as Betty Breakage (ok, that's just my nickname).

Mostly we break inexpensive items like beer or wines around $10, but every once in a blue moon we break something expensive. One day I came back from a luncheon dressed in my best suit with my purse hanging on my shoulder. My purse strap grabbed hold of a $50 bottle of wine and threw it to the floor in such force that it exploded all over me and my suit. I even managed to get it in my hair. Another time I was filling the fine wine box and a bottle of Dom Perignon jumped right off the top shelf and crashed down on a $600 bottle of Leflave white Burgundy. There were a lot of tears that day. Some days like the one pictured here, our employees are just doing their job when one of these bottles of red decides to break. At least there was nothing to mop up.

Most commonly our shopping carts are the culprits. They were designed to have small children sit in the front and put their legs in the holes provided. But, when no child is there, those holes become our enemy. Customers place bottles in this area and the bottles like to slip quietly out the back smashing to the floor. This happens most near the check out registers when customers back up and the bottles back up with them. So, you'll often times see the staff putting their hands in your cart to arrange the bottles and flip up the flap in that top cart area to block the holes and protect the wine. We do it to protect the wine and keep you safe from the shattered glass.

So flip the flap when you grab a cart and help us avoid the spills. Or, we may have to invest in some really long straws!