Colorado Liquor Stores Bitch about Additional Day of Profits
I live in Missouri and I’ve only been to Colorado once – I attended the Great American Beer Festival in Denver one year. So I was surprised to hear on the news yesterday that they, for the first time since Prohibition, were able to sell alcoholic beverages on a Sunday. There is some really great beer brewed in that state so I’d just assumed that crazy-ass blue laws like this had long ago been done away with.
Anyway, the report featured a store owner who was praising the new law allowing Sunday liquor sales. He pointed out that in other states where similar laws had passed the stores typically reported an increase in profits. It makes a lot of sense. Give customers another day to buy liquor – a day of leisure for many of them – and chances are they’ll buy more alcohol.
So this morning I logged on to Google news to read up a bit more on it. The first article I came to was this one: Sunday liquor sales start in Colorado. It opens with a store owner whining that Sunday used to be her only day off. What? She goes on to say that if she’d be given a choice she would have voted against the law.
OK, first, don’t own a business if you don’t want to work. Second, the law doesn’t require you to be open; it allows you to be open. If you want Sunday off DON’T OPEN YOUR DOOR! Third, what do you have against profits? If your goal is to work as little as possible then this extra weekend day of sales might make you enough money to hire some workers and allow you to go home and put your feet up.
And she’s not alone. The article goes on to quote other whiners. So I decided to check with another newspaper and found the same thing in the Colorado Springs Gazette. In Sunday liquor sales begin one store owner even calls this law a “hardship.” I would refer him to the previous paragraph.
What the hell is wrong with these people?
colorado beer colorado liquor law sunday beer salesFiled under: Alcohol Law on July 7th, 2008 |
I used to live in Shreveport, Louisiana. A small town nearby was Haughton. Haughton was dry. I asked myself “Why in the hell did I move here?’” In shreveport, you could not buy liquor on Sunday. Too many Baptists who thought Jesus actually made grape juice at that wedding and not wine.
My brother-in-law was a local boy who knew a woman in rural Haughton that sold beer and booze out her back door, if you know what I mean. With her profits, she paid off the police and had a thriving business, selling product only on Sunday. The lines were long. Once I was introduced, I could buy out her back door too. She was careful like that, only selling to people she knew like the mayor, chief of police, etc. This was Louisiana, you see.
Blue laws are so stupid. Laws like these only create opportunities for an illegal kind of business like the one I described. Prohibition created business opportunity. I see nothing wrong with this kind of thing though. An elderly woman was simply trying to make a living. The shameful part was having to share her profits to keep the authorities at bay .
I grew up in Detroit. During Prohibition, my dad and my uncle would run over to Canada to buy beer and booze. A bottle of scotch for the border guard and everything was fine.
In closing, a quote from Benjamin Franklin: “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy”.
Obviously you don’t understand how retailing of adult beverages evolved in the state. As a lounge chair executive predicting increased profits and chiding those who own licenses regarding our work ethics well….you missed the mark as an oracle. 7 months down the road Sunday is our worst day of the week and all we do with the extra day is chase the sales we lost on Saturday. Saturday used to be the best day of the week. Sunday has been a failure in Colorado where we were already selling as much wine liquor and beer as we could in 6 days! In other words the market was saturated. Please put “market saturated” into perspective when you consider that should the state pass the bad beer law adding 1800+ new licenses…your favorite liquor store in Denver is only be making 10% gross margin just to stay competitive on 12, 18, 20 and 24 packs of beer. How much more room do you think he has to cut prices and still keep his doors open. Enough room to share with 1800+ new locations I don’t think so.
I don’t suppose you know much about the compliance laws liquor stores enforce on a day to day basis, most people don’t . They are quite strict with regard to who we may sell and can not be monitored effectively in a grocery store environment.
Finally if you drink anything other Coors Miller and Bud Light encouraging the state to change the beer laws which will eventually change the wine and then the liquor laws and will only kill the goose that laid your golden egg. Colorado has some of the more incredible adult beverage emporiums in the country. Create a major shift in the current distribution system and you won’t be able to find your favorite bottle of anything. Grocery stores won’t stock it, they won’t do special orders and you won’t have so many great liquor stores around after you allow the state to cut their guts out….
Anyone who drinks anything in this state has it very good….don’t kill that goose….
Jerry Sica
Crossroads Wine & Spirits
Guess you put me in my place, Jerry!
Care to slow down a bit and try to make a little sense?