In Queensland it’s illegal for supermarkets to sell alcohol- I don’t think they’re even allowed to have a bottle shop on the same premises. A bottle shop here has to be affiliated with a Tavern, so what the Big Supermarket Chains do is buy a pub somewhere and then use that to establish bottle shops around town. Liquor Barns are also very popular here, being wholesale liquor places that sell to the public. The sales turnover in some of them is mind-boggling, I’m reliably informed.
I’ve always thought it ironic that the country’s biggest collection of guns, tanks, and aircraft is on the other side of a not-really-all-that-large lake from Parliament House, and despite all the pollies, there didn’t appear to be any decent pubs- or much at all, actually- in Canberra.
Has the ACT replaced Tasmania as the butt of all jokes part of Australia? I must have missed a memo somewhere…
I quit drinking a while back, so any sightseeing trip to a liquor store is like a visit to a cemetery to look at my old friends’ tombstones, but of the different places I’ve lived, the worst stores were the state monopoly ones in Ohio.
A paltry selection of bottles behind thick plexiglass, and a clerk behind bullet-proof glass manning a storeroom. You’d fill out a request chit and submitt it with your ID. Just sad. Not much different from those abandoned buildings where they gouge a little hole in a cinderblock wall so crack addicts will shove money in and rocks comes out.
They probably survive for the same reason any other type of retailer survives against bigger competitors: better selection, better service and/or lower prices.
The liquor store down the street has three supermarkets within a half mile of it. I notice that every Friday and Saturday there’s a continuous stream of people picking up beer kegs. None of the three supermarkets sells beer by the keg. The little liquor store also probably has as much shelf space as all three supermarkets’ combined liquor departments.
That reminds me of the the bizarre rigmarole some restaurants in Richardson had to engage in to sell alcohol. Apparently, the law dictated that you could only sell alcoholic drinks to members of a private club. The restaurants instituted ersatz clubs that anyone of legal age could join. They had you fill out a little form that they never looked at and handed you a business card with the restaurant name and “Member” on it. If you kept the card, you could flash it next time and skip the form; otherwise, you had to fill out the form again. If you ate out at a variety of places and had alcohol with your meals, you’d wind up with a wallet full of brightly-colored little membership cards.
As noted before, grocery stores in Michigan are allowed to sell liquor as long as they have a license. By law, every retailer must charge the same price for hard liquor but they can have different prices for beer and wine. Liquor stores (or as we call them here, “party stores”) exist because they often carry a bigger selection and can be more convenient than the grocery store in terms of checkout lines. You can also get kegs and barrels of beer at party stores and you generally can’t at a grocery.
I experienced Minnesota first-hand this month. I come from Oregon (any beer & wine in nearly any store, liquor in state-owned stores). I think it was about nine o’clock Saturday night, and I went out for a walk, looking for some alcohol to take back to my hotel room. I went to two liquor stores, and both were closed. One of them was connected to a bar, and it was closed. Finally, I went to a gas station, where I found a three-foot-wide corner of the cooler with beer. (An Oregon gas station would have that much space for microbrews, plus two or three times that much for the cheap stuff.) The only one that I didn’t know was bad beer was Leinenkugel, so that’s what I bought. It’s actually pretty decent, for 3.2.
I would like to add (as far as the stores i went to here in Montreal) that you get more personal service than at the groceries stores.
Is there even a clerk for the liquor section? I’ve never seen.
I don’t get it. What is the alcohol volume of, say, an ordinary six-pack of Budweiser? Do they vary the alcohol content for different markets?
ISTR along the Missouri/Oklahoma border (or maybe it was the Missouri/Kansas border) there would be stores on one side or the other offering 5% beer, which said to me that on one side of the line 5% beer was legal, and on the other side it wasn’t.
So does that mean that Budweiser is making 3.2% for some markets, 5% for others, and some other strength for the other markets? Or are these 5% Oklahoma/Missouri beers made by some good ol’ boy brewery specifically for 5% markets?
Yep. In Colorado there are two lines of every mass-beer. The normal recipe for the normal stores, and a 3.2 version for 7-11 et al to stock, so they can sell on Sundays. Heiniken was the “best” 3.2 beer at my local convienice store.
It happened after I turned 18, so 1986 or later. IIRC, we lost out on some highway funds for a few years because of this, but I might be mistaken (I was drinking at the time).
A friend of mine down the street was a year younger and missed out, but I got in under the wire. I don’t remember the exact date, tho.
Wyoming held out longer than CO did, at 19 I made whiskey runs to Cheyenne, but they eventually caved as well.
no liquor sales on sunday, nosirreebob, ‘cause that’s the Lord’s Day, but walk into any grocery store or retail outfit monday through saturday, and it’s the freakin’ lodestone of likker!
that said, and not being much of a hard stuff drinker, i can’t recall if walmart and meijer sell spirits, too, but any marsh or kroger grocery store carries an impressive selection of wines and spirits. almost as good as anything in a regular liquor store.
i love those ohio drive-thrus. when i was a student over at ball state, we’d often hop across the line to buy beer on sunday.
Here in Hamilton County, Ohio, you can buy hard liquor at grocery stores. They’ll scan beer and wine with regular groceries, but apparently they have to scan the hard stuff separately. Our local Kroger actually has a decent selection of hard liquor. But if you walk to the other side of the same strip mall and go into Bigg’s, they have no hard liquor at all. Do not be fooled by the liquids on the shelves that look like liquor. You will notice the fine print identifying these abominations as “diluted spirits”. They look like bourbon or vodka but they are diluted down to something less than 20% I think. I guess Bigg’s doesn’t have a license to sell hard liquor, but they can get away with selling this… stuff.
The full-on local liquor store has a better selection, and its quicker if I just want booze. If I want to kill a lot of time in blissful indecision as I contemplate the glittering stock of bottles, then I have to cross the river and go to Cork and Bottle, where you can buy almost anything alcoholic.
Doesn’t liquor have a much higher profit margin than groceries? The question ought to be, “why are there so many stores selling groceries as well as liquor?”
Further as to Pennsylvania, isn’t it also true that you can only buy beer by the case? No six-packs or singles?
In PA, you can buy sixers or singles at bars and bottle shops, but you’re limited to 192oz of beer per purchase. OR you can buy cases and kegs at beer distributors, with significantly better age checking and whatnot.
In New York, supermarkets can only sell beer. Wine and liquor are sold by liquor stores; they are independent, but licensed by the state. You can also get wine at wineries.
There is no way most supermarkets could keep as large a selection as a liquor store, and I’d be surprised if they wanted to bother. The floor space needed to hold the stock is pretty big, and it wouldn’t really sell well enough to be worth it, even on the higher profit margin. In addition, the thousands of liquor store owners statewide would block any attempt.
I really think independent liquor stores are the best way to handle it, especially for wine. They are run by more knowledgeable people than your average grocery store clerk. If you want to pick a wine, you can ask questions and get answers (most liquor store owners have tasted much of what they sell). In addition, they can purchase small quantities from the smaller producers; they don’t need a thousand cases to put in all their stores – just one or two to see how it sells.
I believe the liquor stores can sell beer, but most don’t.
Now, New Hampshire and Vermont have state liquor stores. They’re better than supermarkets, but don’t stock boutique brands – if your winery doesn’t make enough wine for the needs of the state, you’re out of luck. Both states allow wine sales in groceries simply because the state liquor stores may be quite a way from your town.
