Why don't they sell beer in plastic bottles?

[DSYoungEsq]

@Spectre of Pithecanthropus

That’s how we do it in California, though the liquor isn’t necessarily in front–it’s wherever the store managers decided to put it. However, until sometime in the early 1980s, all the alcohol used to be in separate area off to the side with its own checkout line. The good thing about that was that this checkout line was always the shortest and fastest in the store, and you could take any packaged item there, not just alchohol. You could also take the latter through the general checkouts.

I never figured out why all the liquor counters disappeared.

Different states do different things to control acoholic beverage sales.

Ohio still requires that anything with more than a certain percentage of alcohol be sold out of a state acohol store. This is a bit of a misnomer: the “state” store is merely a place licensed to sell alcohol for the state. IIRC (I’m not gonna look it up cause it’s already a bit of a hijack here), the cut off is about 25%. So if I go to Kroger, for example, and buy real booze, I have to go into a side room, through a door that is monitored, and to exit I have to pay for the booze there.

As a total hijack, to get around this, the alcohol manufacturers are now selling diluted alcohols, like rum, whiskey, vodka (especially vodka) with less than the cut-off amount of alcohol in them. So you can get what I call “near vodka”, which has like 21% alcohol in it (42 proof), without going into a state liquor store.

I much prefer California’s current set up, where everyone with a license can sell anything.

Maybe New South Wales, as a different state, has different rules, don’t ask?

[Ice_Wolf]

@DSYoungEsq

Maybe New South Wales, as a different state, has different rules, don’t ask?

It appears it was the NSW regulations that don’t ask was quoting. That was interesting to me because the situation as Cunctator described is what you’d find here in New Zealand – those of our supermarkets either directly licensed by liquor trusts or located in “wet” areas sell alcohol in separate aisles in the same store as the rest of the items. A separate checkout is usually only there out of convenience or to help the liquor trust keep tabs on the sales.