About BourbonRadar

BourbonRadar helps people around Chicago find allocated and hard-to-find bourbon on real store shelves, starting with Illinois.

How it works

• Shoppers (and stores) report a bottle they saw on a shelf: the store, a rough quantity, and the price if they noticed it.
• Every tip is reviewed before it shows on the site.
• Each sighting shows how long ago it was seen. Fresh means under 2 hours, Stale means 2 to 24 hours, and older ones are hidden by default.
• Quantities are rough buckets (1–2, a few, plenty), not exact counts. Allocated bottles sell fast, so always check with the store before you drive.
• When we know a reference price, we flag how a shelf price compares. The reference is the Michigan Liquor Control Commission’s minimum shelf price, a public state price list. It’s a guide, not the Illinois retail price.

What we don’t do

• We don’t scrape retailer websites or copy their inventory.
• We don’t sell bottles, take payments or post resale offers.
• We don’t need an account. Tips don’t ask for your name or email.

21+ only

BourbonRadar is for adults of legal drinking age (21+ in the U.S.). Please drink responsibly and never drink and drive.

Credits

Store locations © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License. ZIP code locations come from the U.S. Census Bureau gazetteer. Reference prices come from the Michigan Liquor Control Commission price book.