Highly Allocated Products for Licensees
Highly Allocated Products for LICENSEES (click here to access the application)
Highly allocated items are comprised of special releases of products, including sought-after bourbons, whiskies, and other small-batch spirits. The highly allocated policy ensures that access to rare products is distributed fairly among retail customers and license holders across the County. While the standard policies will remain in place for items traditionally available by the case, ABS will also make available orders by the bottle for certain highly allocated items. These will be ordered through wholesale and be processed for pickup through ABS retail stores; orders will not follow the normal delivery process through the warehouse due to orders being taken by the bottle (not by the case).
For these specific items, licensees are able to request a maximum of one (1) bottle per item, for up to three (3) different items on the 3rd Thursday of every month. Once your request has been processed, you will receive an email confirming, based on availability, that the items you selected are ready for pick-up. After that, you will have 14 days to pick up and purchase your bottles at the ABS Muddy Branch Store located at 866 Muddy Branch Road, Gaithersburg, MD 20878. Bottles will be reserved online on a first-come first-served basis for your business.
To view the available highly allocated items and to place your order requests, sign-in with your iStore login and password into the Highly Allocated Products application. If you do not have an iStore account and need to create a login and password for access to reserve the highly allocated items, go to www.montgomerycountymd.gov/abs/istore.
*If you choose to purchase additional bottle(s) directly through the ABS retail stores, the normal ABS retail store policy applies. Retail store HAL policy: Highly allocated products are limited to one bottle each of two different items (totaling two bottles maximum) per customer, per day. On the second Saturday of every month, highly allocated products will be available for purchase on a first come, first serve basis. A list of items and locations will be posted a minimum of 48 hours prior to the release on the ABS Retail web page. Customers are not able to place any highly allocated product on hold. Licensees can participate in the Retail release as well and are permitted to use their licensee number to get wholesale pricing. Those items must follow the same rules as items being ordered though the warehouse.
ABS will also offer an annual lottery for very rare items. There will be a lottery for licensees only. If a licensee resides in the State of Maryland, they can also enter the Maryland state resident lottery, and if they reside in Montgomery County they can enter the Montgomery County resident lottery. As with the highly allocated items, if a license number is used to apply the wholesale discount on these items, all rules that apply to orders of product through the warehouse apply to these items as well.
Highly allocated items are designated by ABS using several factors including but not limited to the market demand, distillery releases, and supplier allotments. Classification of a highly allocated product may change. When/if this happens, it will be communicated on the Retail highly allocated webpage, www.montgomerycountymd.gov/ABS/HAL.
If you have any questions, contact the ABS Communication Center at 240-777-1900.