One of the key aims of Pennsylvania’s new governor is to get the state out of the liquor store business. Currently, all liquor and wine is sold at state-run stores. The plan is to auction off those licenses to raise money and open up the marketplace.
This will eliminate one of the problems with the alcohol industry in the state, but, in reality, just scratches the surface. It’s sad to report that this one move will probably serve as the only move in this saga for a while.
A post about the differing fortunes of beer drinkers versus those who enjoy wine and liquor appeared on the RockTheCapital.com website this week. It looks like those of us who enjoy brew will have to continue to patronize more than one kind of store to get our fix.
You see, if you want a case or keg of beer, you can go to a distributor. These are usually pretty big businesses with lots of variety and pretty competitive proces. But you need to buy at least a case.
If you want six or 12 beers at a time, you pretty much need to find a bar which sells carry out beer. Most of them do, but not all of them really push this part of their business. That means they generally have pretty limited selections and tend to charge a premium price.
At least this is my experience in York County where I live. The only places I know of with a dedicated cooler for takeout might have one or two micro/craft brew options in their cooler. Maybe. The places that carry a good variety of beer don’t really cater to carryout customers with no takeout cooler and higher prices.
On the flip side, if I go to a package store in Maryland – which has beer, wine and liquor all in one place – I can find a really good variety of interesting beers to choose from. This is why I buy a lot of my beer in Maryland, where I work, and bootleg it home. yes, I am breaking the law when I buy beer in Maryland and bring it home. But I’ll take that risk.
All of Pennsylvania’s problems in this area come down to lobbyists. The Tavern Association wants to keep distributors from selling 6 and 12 packs because they “bought their licenses knowing they can sell cases and above,” meaning that no one should ever look at changing a stupid law created in the 1930s because people know what they are getting into. The power of this group against the distributor group against whatever group will represent the new liquor store owners against the church groups and teetotalers will win out against the interests of the people who want to spend Monday in the state.
So instead of taking a comprehensive look at the entire alcohol sales industry in the state, all we will get is the politically and fiscally lucrative baby step of simply selling off the liquor stores. I’ll drown my sorrows about this decision with a beer I bought in Maryland. I only wanted a 6-pack.
Here’s hoping Wegmans joins the fight against stupid PA alcohol laws. One new store built near my hometown already has a huge micro-brew selection from which you can build your own six-packs; and because there is a restaurant with liquor license in the store, there’s no way the state can stop them from selling it. Hopefully the pressure will soon be on to allow sales greater than 12 at a time and better availability in grocery stores; other store chains will soon complain that the state is shackling them by not letting all supermarkets carry beer and driving all their customers toward the one store where they can get it.
A farmer’s market place near me just got approval to sell 6-packs – and they can mix and match. They will focus on PA microbrews, which will be fantastic.
No kidding about these laws. The other crazy fact about PA liquor laws is that in the carryout or bottle shops, you can only purchase (I think) 168 oz at a time- or the equivalent of 1 12 pack. SO, when kids would come in wanting to buy more then one at a time…they had to purchase them individually and carry the beer OUT of the store/off-premise before they could come in and buy another 12 pack. Never a big fan of them.
Pa has the worst, weirdest adult beverage laws. MD is not much better, but at least offers some choices, albeit most of them sleazy.
Come to VA, we only have the state run (very efficiently) the hard liquor sales – you can buy from 1-36 beers at the grocery store (or Rite-Aid which somehow is always cheaper) or 7-11.