When I was living in WA state, Liquor was just inconvenient to get. There were only a couple of stores and they tended to be in out of the way locations, selection depended on a central purchasing authority which meant obscure and specialty liquors were hard to find (although WA did a better job than some states in catering to cocktail aficionados) and opening hours were short.
Now, living in California, liquor is easy to get, far cheaper and available 24/7.
md2000: Retail is a non-trivial industry and everything from supply side management to discounting to aisle design can impact the bottom line. So yes, I do expect private sellers to be able to wring efficiencies out of the system that the government isn’t able to.
Well if the state commission has not being proactive in reducing corruption or exploiting those same efficiencies, then they deserve to be privatized as an object lesson. From what little I know most of the provincial liquor marts here are motivated by the fear of privatization to be up to date in their efficiencies.