I’ve been meaning to ask this for ages: What the hell is 3.2 Beer?
Oops forgot to answer the OP. Back when I was a heavy drinker I used to buy from Liquor stores for reduced prices and better selection. I still do when I want a good bourbon since the choice at the grocery store is Jim Beam, Jack Daniels and rotgut.
In Canada, most provinces (except BC, apparently) only sell alcohol at government-run liquor stores (“liquor board,” “beer store,” etc.) In Quebec, beer and wine are available in grocery stores, but finer wines and hard liquor are only available at the SAQ (Société des alcools du Québec).
3.2% alcohol by weight (not volume).
Sounds like Richardson growing around some other town, but my understanding was that it was annexed, but got to keep the liquor stores.
I was talking about Richardson and Buckingham, but I had the impression that Buckingham refused them for years. Maybe they’ve gone through with it now. I moved farther away years ago.
In New Mexico, Grocery stores can have liquor departments if they have the license for it, and most do.
Thing is, liquor sales are high profit margin, and grocery sales are low profit margin. So to some extent, the grocery stores raise the liquor prices a bit to subsidize the low profit groceries.
The liquor stores are generally a little bit cheaper as a result, have more selection. And often have overstock type deals MUCH lower than the grocery stoes. Also, you don’t have to wait behind the jerk running a cart of 587 items through the express line, and trying to pay $30 using food stamps and the balance with a cheque written in Canadian dollars and no ID, who keeps shushing the cashier who is trying to interupt his cell phone conversation.
Try this for something that looks odd.
I live in a town on the Texas/Arkansas border. The Texas side is dry and Arkansas is wet.
Through the middle of town is a street called State Line Avenue. Appropriately enough Texas is on one side and Arkansas is on the other.
Driving down State Line you look to one side and see licquor stores. To the other you see convenience stores selling lottery tickets.
I’m not a drinker, so I’m not actually sure, but our grocery stores seem to have plenty of every kind of drinkable. Still, there are plenty of liquor stores around here (with really classy names, like Likker Locker) and they do just fine. I suppose it’s convenience and volume.
Grocery stores don’t always have the greatest selection of wines. You can find some decent stuff there, but if you’re looking for a lot of variety in terms of countries and types, liquor stores usually have them beat.
Nitpick: Ontario’s Beer Stores are a private enterprise, owned by three breweries (Labatt, Molson, and Sleeman last time I checked). They’re not government-run.
In my part of Australia all the booze is sold out of liquor stores or pubs. The local corner stores can’t sell alcohol although there very likely will be a liquor store (bottle shop in the local parlance) next door or around the corner. Some pubs may sell over the counter but most have a separate little bottle shop tacked on somewhere. The big supermarkets are also into appending bottle shops onto the side of the main store. They tend to be cheaper than the suburban bottle-o and are probably responsible for driving a good few to the wall with their (anti)competitive pricing.
I haven’t bought any take-away booze for about three years now so someone with better research in the field might like to expand on the local situation. 
We called the liquor board the beer store in Manitoba.
I’m in a county in Maryland that has county dispensaries & no private stores, and I rarely go in them anyway, so I’m a liquor store 'tard.
In regular retail liquor stores I notice there’s tons of really oddball liquors. Out of curiosity what happens to this unusual liquor that just doesn’t sell? Do they just keep marking it done until it’s so cheap someone buys it?
Or to Newport. ::: takes a sip of Pappy Van Winkle’s:::
Good ole free enterprise. Some of these other states should try it.
I have friends in Wa. Whenever I go up there, they give me a wish list of one or two bottles they want that they either can’t get at the State store, or cost your right arm and left leg.
When I grew up in Chicago (I’m 46), grocery stores could not sell liquor of any sort. Some drug stores could sell beer or wine, but only if they sold it in a “separate” facility, so the local Osco drug store had a separate entrance and cash register for the booze section of the store, and they had a very limited selection. By contrast there were fairly large liquor only stores (Gold Eagle, Teddy’s) that had an enormous wine selection, sold kegs, and were generally full service.
I live in California now, and grocery stores can sell wine, beer, and spirits. Where I live, the selection of wines in groceries is pretty good, beer marginal, spirits fairly bad (unless you want 1/2 gallons of the big three – vodka, tequila, rum). There is a fairly slim number of liquor stores that I’d prefer to patronize, but I do so when I can if they offer much better selection and service than the grocery store.
In any case, independent liquor stores are obviously relics here, and I expect they’ll be gone altogether sooner or later. They seem to be going strong where I grew up in Illinois, and I expect they will as long as general food stores have restrictions on what types of liquors they can sell.
Here in Virginia, we have state-run liquor stores, but any old store can sell beer & wine (with a permit, of course). I like it here because you can get booze 7 days a week, none of that closed on Sunday BS.
The state stores are well-stocked, although not really cheap. Then again, you don’t have the hangers-on like some private stores.
Oh, and Projammer, been there, done that. (I’m from Dardanelle, in a dry county)
What we in Australia would call “Gold” or “Mid-Strength” beer, in other words…
In Kansas City there was a street like that, State Line Street. Kansas on one side, Missouri on the other. Before Kansas liberalized it’s liquor laws there would be bars on one side, but not the other.