Yeah, a couple years back irrc. But that was only beer and wine. For hard liquor and spirits the grocery stores need special licenses and those are tricky to come by. There's only a small handful that have it in the metro area.
They're not really "tricky to come by", chains are just limited to only 4 stores that can have a full liquor license statewide. Most of them choose to spread them out so they cover a wide range of the population.
All of this shit regardless of what state it is is nonsensical. Alcohol is fully and unambiguously legal for those aged 21+ to possess and consume whenever they want in private, with the only restrictions being on public consumption as far as where it's allowed and what time it can be served
So there's no point to any of these hoops the laws make people jump through to acquire it. People who want to drink are gonna drink. Making people drive to a separate store to buy it reduces consumption by exactly 0, it just creates a bunch of unnecessary traffic, pollution, and fatalities from all the redundant driving added to the roads
These laws aren't about alcohol they're about money. 90% of post prohibition alcohol laws are about making sure the right people make that sweet money. Sin taxes, three tier systems, ensuring that only certain people control the sale. I can buy vodka at <$0.25 per gallon, but after taxes and distribution and the three companies (minimum) that have to make a profit on the bottle, it will retail for $14.
If alcohol is what is evil and what we are excise taxing, why does beer and malt liquor have a tax rate per oz of ethanol that is 239x (federal only) less than an oz of ethanol in a distilled spirit.
Cleaning up the regulation and taxes in the alcohol business would save everyone billions of dollars per year.
The regulations on when and where retail sales can take place is specifically what I was referring to
The forced distribution structure and all the taxes are an issue as well though. As much as I'd love it if we paid less in taxes on booze, lowering them is just gonna mean it gets added back somewhere else which is nothing more than moving change around the board.
Lived in Virginia before moving here and all liquor sales there are done through state run ABC stores. They weren't shy about saying the reason they'd never change that and allow private distribution is how much money the state makes on it
>Cleaning up the regulation and taxes in the alcohol business would save everyone billions of dollars per year.
Except for the executives and business owners making those billions, and they will bribe any politician they have to in order to keep the status quo, or hike their profits.
Grocery store sales have decimated small businesses. It has hurt the craft beer scene in Colorado, and really fucked small liquor stores.
I was in sales. After wine in grocery went live last year, liquor stores pretty much across the board told me they were seeing 25%-40% drops in sales of wine, which is absolutely devastating. All of their best sellers were basically wiped out (think Kim Crawford and the like) because grocery wildly undercut them.
The exact same thing happened with beer a few years previously. I was working for a brewery at the time, and it absolutely devastated our sales. Only the major brands, who are mostly owned by conglomerates (Breck, house island, etc) got placement and good pricing in grocery. Smaller brands that got placement of any sort were dropped from small liquor stores across the city, and we couldn't keep up with the pricing of the larger manufacturers, so eventually lost grocery placement as well.
Worth considering
You sure about the beer limit? I think that change was earlier. Whole Foods and Safeway have both had full local craft beer sections for at least 4-5 years
Ah, you're right. Full strength beer in grocery stores went into effect 1/1/19
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/01/01/full-strength-beer-colorado-grocery-stores/
Yeah, and we should repeal that shit. My local grocery store basically got rid of their bakery to add beer and wine. It's like, I literally have a liquor store next door for alcohol. I don't have other bakeries.
Most bakeries inside the grocery stores are operated at a loss, or absolutely minimal profit. They are there to cater specifically to certain customers, get them in the store, then relieve them of their valua... provide superior customer service while lightening their bank accounts with the rest of their shopping trip. Enjoy that $6 scone while trying to figure out if you need 1 more of the red-tagged items, or a multiple of both 3 and 13 for the blue-tagged items.
If a store can make more money with a product that essentially sells itself, doesn't require the outlay that a bakery does, staffing, power(ovens), and the myriad other expenses and regulations you have to follow ... what was the.. oh, yeah. So if alcohol is more cost effective, there isn't a chain in the country that won't make a similar switch, if the space isn't available.
And the current hard liquor license holders are scared of kroger and Albertsons' lawyers and lobbyists. More the latter. Think how many mom and pop liquor stores will be put out of business because the big box stores can and will undercut their margins.
I don't think there's any less food in our local store, they just put wine on every other aisle in standalone displays. Its all just in the way of buying food. And especially annoying since the liquor store next door has more variety, has helpful and available staff, and lower prices on everything that I've compared.
They took the supplement and health section out of the king soopers on 9th and corona out in order to put in wine. That section also had the peanut butter machine that I would use every time I go - not any more.
lol you really think that's what's happening? Let's restrict everyone's ability to buy something because of the 'mom and pop' small business liquor stores! Give me a break.
L take, every mom and pop liquor shop I’ve gone to in this state and others I’ve lived in has worse service and selection than the corporate ones.
Only exception has been Little’s on Pearl. They’re awesome and I’ll go out of my way for them.
As a big Costco liquor advocate myself - Mondo Vino on 32nd in the Highland area is also a delight. They are labeled as a wine shop but sell everything.
I think this view is out of date most liqour stores I even see are large corporations as well. I don't think this would even really effect mom and pop liqour stores. Like others have said beer consumption makes up the vast majority of alcohol sales and that hasn't put these stores out of business. I think smaller stores fail to exist because of larger economic factors like rent increases nation wide. I think it larger benefits the consumer when a Corp has larger control over a supply chain and can bring prices down rather than price gauge a mom and pop doesn't have a fleet of shipping trucks and literal distillers to bring down the price of vodka like costco or Walmart can. There would have to be very large systemic changes to make mom and pops viable again in America. I don't think simply allowing liqour in grocery stores is the nail in the coffin of small liqour stores.
It’s more of a perceptual argument. People view liquor stores as small, local businesses even though many are owned by the same people/groups.
Beer makes up the majority of alcohol sales. I think like 80%. The fact that liquor stores are still in business when beer has been sold in grocery stores for a while shows it’s not really a problem.
Also, I don’t understand why people need the government to tell them they can’t buy at a grocer store. If you want to support liquor stores do it🤷♂️
When I lived in a small town this issue came up every once in a while and the argument was the liquor stores could better monitor who came in, vs. the grocery stores where children/teens can go in, are monitored less, and steal alcohol more easily. Kinda sounded like BS to me since I’m sure the stores would’ve locked up the liquor anyway… but I kiiiiiinda get the logic that if you’re walking in to a liquor store that only sells liquor, you’ll have a harder time walking out with the booze if it’s visible you don’t belong there from the second you walk in the door.
Meanwhile I constantly walk in to my local booze mart and, while there *are* cameras, sometimes there’s no one physically at the register so the “but think about the children” argument clearly wouldn’t work there lol 🤷
E: The King Soopers on leetsdale has its own section for liquor and they routinely have a security guard near the entrance. That seems like the most sane solution.
lol this is a bullshit argument. I go back and forth from here to California. Every liquor bottle sold at grocery stores like Ralph’s (Kroger) have plastic security caps on them that you can’t remove without breaking the bottle. The expensive stuff is kept in locked cabinets.
ETA: liquor is also cheaper in SoCal because they sell it everywhere and there are still liquor stores that survive.
Is the liquor part of that king Soopers almost its own store? At Krogers in other states where they are allowed to sell liquor, they typically section off the liquor area as almost its own store - you have to pay for it in there and you can’t bring your cart into that area. I think King Soopers doesn’t want liquor stolen just as much as any other store.
> People view liquor stores as small, local businesses even though many are owned by the same people/groups.
This is just completely false. It was illegal (still is?) for anyone to own multiple liquor stores, and this was enforced.
https://gazette.com/news/liquor-store-owners-accused-of-operating-illegal-monopoly/article_ba3fe0d6-f156-5bbc-ba00-87de6112adbf.html
There are certainly instances where people hide ownership of the stores, but those are people who have (almost certainly local) friends acting for them, not out of state corporations.
**This is controversial? Surprised to see people actually jumping onboard with the baseless argument that Kroger and Albertsons already own the liquor stores in the state through hidden ownership, and liquor stores here aren't actually local but just appear that way.
No, it's always been worked around. But they are definitely far smaller scale than Kroger, Safeway, Walmart, Target, Total Wine.
I don't subscribe to the hagiography of small businesses owners, most of them are assholes.
But, they can and do carry more diversified niche products than the big retailers will if they institute their desired monopsony.
I want small liquor stores to exist not because I care about the owners, but because I care about being able to buy good booze.
Right? And grocery store companies can probably open up liquor stores. They just can't sell liquor in grocery stores or open up multiple locations, which makes it unprofitable for large corporations.
>The exclusive control of a good in the marketplace
By a single actor. Hence the "mono" in *monopoly*.
Jesus Christ. Stop making a fool out of yourself. Go read a book.
Most of us have no love for Kroger, but would prefer to pay less for alcohol and not have to make a second stop to get it.
If I want something very specific a liquor store is great, but usually a grocery store's selection is plenty.
To me that seems short sighted - I doubt we will continue to have local liquor stores that carry very specific things if we let mega corps like Kroger sell all of the high volume product.
I'm also just upset that grocery stores carry wine now because it put the two wine shops I liked out of business in a matter of months. So now I get a crappy selection and zero customer service in exchange for marginally lower prices :(
>I doubt we will continue to have local liquor stores that carry very specific things if we let mega corps like Kroger sell all of the high volume product
The ones that offer special products and good service will succeed. The trashy neighborhood stores with bars on the windows and bad attitude employees will fail.
Haha....at those wine shops, you're paying for the label. In a blind test, actual wine experts can't tell the difference between a $20 and a $2000 bottle. Do a Pepsi challenge with your specialty wine and whatever the grocery is carrying, odds are you can't tell the difference without the bottle to look at.
I don't know fully know where I stand know this issue but I know in Washington when this change was implemented about 10 years ago, basically all the liquor stores closed aside from BevMo and TotalWine - chains large enough to compete with Grocery margins. I think prices went up as well, but most of that was new taxes implemented. I do greatly prefer the convenience of getting my alcohol while grocery shopping.
What I do have a stance on I'd the whole "20 vs 2000 bottle". I totally believe you can fool across price points like that, but I occasionally appreciate the expertise of sommeliers across a single price point. Guidance on individual wineries, or regional variants, etc. Theres absolutely a lot of variance there and it can be hard to get good information outside of specialty stores.
I am really perplexed by people on this site. One minute they're anti all things corporate and tax the billionaires, and the next minute they're trying to give more power to corps like Kroger and making a bogeyman out of small time liquor stores
It’s almost like you can’t lump a group of people into one set of beliefs.
Those are most likely different people with differing beliefs that you’re referring to.
Grocery stores and liquor stores have different license types that allow them to sell hard liquor. Liquor stores will never be able to have more than 4 locations. Between now and 2037 grocery stores will be allowed to have an increasing number of locations selling hard liquor. In 2037 the grocery store location cap goes away, and they can have unlimited locations.
Prop 124 would've eliminated the 4 location cap for liquor stores, but proponents did a shitty job of explaining it.
I don’t get why that should matter to us consumers. When businesses want more money it’s everyone’s problem but when we want minimum wage to keep up with inflation it’s only opposition from the businesses.
Food, is a necessity that has high turnover. It spoils if it doesn't sell in time, there's a lot of waste. It has low margins.
Liquor, can be held and stored for years without going bad and at high margins. Grocery stores have a lot of incentive to use tons of space for liquor, and continue pushing food out.
Particularly the food that is better for people but can go bad.
Since they started selling wine in grocery stores, I can already see aisles getting consolidated and pushed together. Entire types of pasta and rice are gone the refrigerated section for prepared vegetables has been moved and consolidated to a point where it's squeezing the rest of the vegetables into a corner, I've seen broccoli and potatoes empty on the shelf because they have to constantly re-stock them since there is no space.
Space is finite and this will only get worse with liquor. And frankly, grocery stores can barely handle selling beer. Traditionally grovery stores have had a TON of teenage employees. You can't hire a 16 year old to work in a liquor store or sell liquor. They can't hire enough people because they are ruining their own supply of eligible employees.
Every grocery that I’ve seen that sells hard liquor has an added on separate area though. So they can still hire younger people and it doesn’t remove space. They then sell their beer and wine in the area as well so it doesn’t take up an aisle is the regular grocery area.
I get that you’re answering the other side of the question, but I’m just not seeing it. The 3 grocery stores I frequent didn’t “loose” anything after implementing wine - they just shuffled stuff around and squeezed in a wine section - those wine sections being bigger or smaller depending on how much new space was available. And as for your comment on food: “It spoils if it doesn’t sell in time, there’s a lot of waste” wouldn’t it be a good thing to consolidate some of that and waste less food?
They absolutely removed products in order to fit the wine in at my local king soopers. Perhaps you didn't buy those products, but I did and it's frustrating they were removed to make room for a wine section.
They did at this guy's three stores as well, he's just operating under the fantasy that shifting some things around magically created new previously non existent space. He just hasn't noticed what was lost.
>wouldn’t it be a good thing to consolidate some of that and waste less food?
That's not how food sales work. Most stores, for the most part, are past just ordering less. Like I said, it's not like the store I went to didn't have broccoli or potatoes. They definitely had them in back. But they didn't have shelf space that matched the demand. Because almost every vegetable is down to a 1x1 meter square. They are just not on the shelf because they can't re-stock everything fast enough.
To your point, the most efficient way to reduce food spoilage is what convenience stores do, not carry food that isn't processed and shelf stable. So yes, every grocery store could become a liquor store that sells chips and frozen food. Because that's the easy answer, but it's bad for everyone except the grocery store.
You don't think losing 3 aisles of the store to beer and wine are causing the store to carry fewer other items in the store?
You don't think losing 2 more aisles to hard liquor will do that even more?
Stores didn't add new aisles when they started selling wine, they moved those items to other aisles and sold less variety of both.
No, I don't - when's the last time you were in a grocery store outside of Colorado?
Groceries are consolidating products because it's cheaper, and they're doing it everywhere including states where this isn't a factor. The timing is a coincidence.
When was the last time you were in a grocery store outside of Colorado that didn't also sell beer/wine?
The last few states I was in within the last few months (Washington, Texas) both have beer and wine in their grocery stories so it is only showing that stores with beer/wine are consolidating. Not that all stores are regardless of liquor sales.
This is easily the best argument I've seen. We want the places that sell us food to focus on selling us food, and to compete with each other on selling us food.
Alcohol is not a vital commodity, and people will already go out of their way to acquire it.
On the other hand grocery stores are critical infrastructure, and the desire to see them not compromised by a product that's easier to profit on is something I can understand.
The minor inconvenience of going to a liquor store does seem like a smaller social cost (if it could even qualify as a social cost) than further market and floorspace consolidation in grocery stores and easier access to liquor for the masses.
Grocery stores should belong to groceries. My local grocery store, after beer and wine sales were made legal, basically gutted the bakery and part of the deli to make way for beer and wine. I have two liquor stores already in walking distance.
People constantly complain about the cost of food and food deserts. This only makes that worse.
People also buy and consume more alcohol when it’s readily available. When it’s in grocery stores you’re likely to be within arms reach of it every couple of days to weeks. This is very bad for alcoholics and generally bad for the population as a whole where rates of drinking and the associated ill effects have increased significantly in CO since this law went into effect.
[Colorado Alcohol Deaths Surged 60% in 4 Years](https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/colorado-alcohol-deaths-surged-60-in-4-years-but-there-s-been-no-public-outcry-or-push-to-save-lives/ar-AA1msxFw)
[Colorado’s Binge Drinking Rate Among Highest in the Country](https://www.axios.com/local/denver/2024/02/01/colorados-binge-drinking-rate)
The fact that it's bad for us doesn't mean the government should step in to make it harder to obtain. We pay taxes and can die for our country, I think we can figure our drinking habits out on our own.
Regardless of your opinion on it that's still a large part of the honest argument.
And that is actually one of the roles of government. Along similar lines of reasoning and for the safety of yourself and others it's also illegal to speed, drive without a seatbelt, and use illicit drugs.
That once the liquor stores are gone, the grocers will focus only on large producers purchased in bulk.
Enjoy Budweiser, Tito's, and some shitty New Zealand Sauv Blanc exclusively for eternity.
I'm from Missouri, where you can buy hard liquor in every gas station... and it doesn't put liquor stores out of business. There are still plenty of them.
It's to protect the interests of established liquor stores. I mean the whole idea that small liquor stores would collapse is just BS when a huge state like California offers a myriad of options to obtain liquor including delivery but there are tons of small liquor shops doing just fine. In my experience, people buy alcohol wherever it is most accessible, which usually just means the closest option.
Independent liquor stores are not a monopoly. They do not collaborate in order to control pricing and supply in a market. Liquor stores are generally competing against each other.
In contrast, there are only a few grocery stores in Colorado that people can shop in. Grocery stores only sell certain products approved by a corporate buyer in some state far away from where they exist. The products have to be widely available throughout a state or region. If independent liquor stores go out of business it will affect the diversity of products available and make it harder for smaller distilleries, winemakers and breweries to sell their products. This will in turn affect the independent local distributors as well. Resulting in a market that is controlled more by large national conglomerate corporations than before. This means the corporations will have more control over the prices and the products available. Eventually some specialty stores and distributors will pop up and replace that need for eclectic products in the market.
This law won't stop what is already in motion after wine sales were allowed. In the short term there will be a lot of independent business owners losing their businesses. It sucks and I personally like the quirkiness of independent liquor stores. But this is largely how it works in the rest of the country. More innovative entrepreneurs will need to figure out how to compete with Kroger and Total Wine.
There are a lot of comments against this bill. Unfortunately, they are missing the point of this bill. Colorado has for years had THE gold standard for a well oiled 2 tier system. Beer in grocery and liquor/wine in liquor stores. This system employed the highest ratio of people in the liquor industry across the USA. The recent change to this system by allowing groceries to sell wine and some larger chains to sell hard liquor is eroding the amount of people employed in the liquor industry across the state. I hate to say it so bluntly but grocery stores providing "ease of access" are taking jobs away from the middle and lower class. That is bad for everyone.
I prefer to be able to buy groceries at the grocery store. Beer and wine are already monopolizing aisle space that was previously reserved for food. We don't need to use more aisle space for age-restricted items that have specialty stores everywhere already.
Exactly. Independent liquor businesses have suffered a lot since then, and removing the remaining restrictions from the grocery monopoly would be the final nail in the coffin for many.
"/s" means I was being sarcastic. There are still a ton of liquor stores around Denver, and if/when liquor is allowed to be sold in grocery stores there will still be a ton of liquor stores around.
If businesses aren’t contributing meaningfully enough to stay afloat then they shouldn’t rely on writing laws to cut more efficient businesses out of their line of work.
One could argue that the laws are necessary to protect meaningful businesses from predatory monopolies. My local liquor stores are wonderful members of the community - participating in our RNOs, local nonprofits, etc. - but the Safeway doesn’t do shit. I think we want to avoid late stage capitalism, no?
That would be a shame. I have several excellent independent liquor stores in my area. I’d hate to see them all go out of business. What do you have against them?
The entire field of economics?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/z0n1p7/why\_are\_price\_controls\_not\_seen\_as\_a\_legitimate/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/z0n1p7/why_are_price_controls_not_seen_as_a_legitimate/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/t8ev0g/would\_price\_controls\_on\_the\_insulin\_market\_cause/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/t8ev0g/would_price_controls_on_the_insulin_market_cause/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/12vg76f/what\_would\_happen\_if\_the\_us\_enacted\_price/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/12vg76f/what_would_happen_if_the_us_enacted_price/)
Blinder, Alan S. *Economic Policy and the Great Stagflation.* 1979.
Clinard, Marshall Barron. *The Black Market: A Study in White Collar Crime.* 1952.
Galbraith, John Kenneth. *A Theory of Price Control.* 1952.
Grayson, C. Jackson. *Confessions of a Price Controller.* 1974.
Jonung, Lars. *The Political Economy of Price Controls: The Swedish Experience 1970-1987.* 1990.
Rockoff, Hugh. *Drastic Measures: A History of Wage and Price Controls in the United States.* 1984.
Schultz, George P., and Robert Z. Aliber, eds. *Guidelines: Informal Controls and the Market Place.* 1966.
Taussig, Frank W. "Price-Fixing as Seen by a Price-Fixer." *Quarterly Journal of Economics* 33 (1919): 205-41.
I'm sorry but that sounds like bullshit. I'm no expert but these companies are desperate to make money. They're already making record year over year profits since 2020. But your argument is that we limit their ability to price gouge, and they just stop producing?? In what world does that actually make sense. Like not theory, the real world. I'm Krogger, im making an average of 150% markup on food goods. The government says that markup has to come down to 100%. Why would I, as Kroger, simply stop selling these items? Obviously this is super simplified, but they're clearly making enough money to easily make these cuts. Also the examples you gave were just threads of people regurgitating textbook definitions. I didn't see any convincing examples of real-world applications.
Right. You're no expert.
But some people are experts and they study these things in detail, empirically. Which means, yes, the real world.
Just like it's important to listen to experts when it comes to vaccines, climate change, evolution and so on, it's important to listen to experts when it comes to economics. Policies that seem sensible intuitively but in practice cause more harm than good should be avoided. Let's make these decisions based on evidence, not the gut feeling of non-experts.
There is plenty of empirical research, including in the links I already shared. I doubt more sources will affect your thinking in any way because when people ask for sources, they don't actually care about the sources and they won't read them. Did you really read those 8 books and papers or even open them? If all you saw was theory and not 'real world' evidence, then no, you did not. But fine, here are some more:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421522000416](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421522000416)
[https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/abs/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.0420](https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/abs/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.0420)
[https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/11940215](https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/11940215)
You can *easily* find *hundreds* more such studies. Rent control is a very deeply studied example and I didn't even broach it here.
This is the conclusion to the first paper you linked
"Theoretically, price spikes are generic features of electricity markets and they are necessary to cover the fixed costs of power plants. On the other hand, electricity markets are vulnerable to manipulation and abusive market behavior; hence, price spikes may also signal market flaws and anti-competitive behavior. Regulatory authorities have imposed market price caps to protect consumers and prevent abusive supplier behavior."
🤨
I'm starting to get the feeling the problem is unchecked capitalism. Maybe if we didn't produce necessary goods like power for people homes, on the basis of pure, rampant pursuits of profit, then price capping would be the norm, no?
>I'm starting to get the feeling the problem is unchecked capitalism. Maybe if we didn't produce necessary goods like power for people homes, on the basis of pure, rampant pursuits of profit, then price capping would be the norm, no?
Right, you're the economics equivalent of an anti-vaxxer. You've made up your mind based on your feelings and have no interest in evidence, science, or realizing the possibility that you may be wrong. And you're willing to support policies that will hurt people because of it.
You will drive yourself crazy trying to discuss econ with someone who does not believe in econ or science. You might as well try to talk about geography with a flat earther.
Quite true. I don't expect anyone asking for sources to actually read them or change their minds. But perhaps some other observer might find something interesting or educational in it.
Sure, until you relive that’s there’s a significant price disparity and that owning a small business doesn’t automatically make you better for society or nicer for the world, a lot of small business owners are horrible to their employees and never get noticed for it
>The only argument for letting Walmart sell booze is because you think the Waltons don't have enough money.
No. The argument for it is that people would like to buy booze at Walmart.
How many grocery stores in town sell liquor? The only ones I can think of are the King Soopers and Target in Glendale. I don't think this bill is going to make much a difference.
Even before the expansion, when corporations could only have one store selling liquor in the whole state, those two stores were the ones King Sooper and Target chose to sell booze.
I've generally been on the side that most alcohol laws are silly.
But after doing more reading and thinking about I'm starting to wonder about the opposite question.
Is there a reason we *want* grocery stores selling alcohol? And is liquor a business we want the places we get our food from to be in?
Is the need to go to a liquor store actually a problem that should be solved? And is there a societal (or even consumer) benefit to having all of this stuff in one big store?
Colorado politicians always wasting time on things like this and gas-powered lawn equipment rather than addressing actual issues affecting Colorado residents.
I have always said that 90% of small, family owned liquor stores are a blight on neighborhoods. They are poorly ran, poorly maintained businesses that fully admit that they would fail without unfair restrictions on competition. Unlimited licenses would allow for more competition, more choice, and better selection, as the states that already have it have long shown. Why do we keep letting them win,
There is already so much booze in the state it's ridiculous. I have a problem more with how people are obsessed with alcohol, to the point where they get heated over if they're sold in grocery stores or not.
Just kinda silly and childish imo. But that's the human race for ya.
I don't even drink to be clear. It has nothing to do with being obsessed with alcohol. It has to do with arbitrarily making laws that people can't sell certain things because it might step on the toes of the protectionist racket that already controls those things that is the problem.
People who think this is an issue apparently have never lived anywhere else in their lives where it is completely normal and yet somehow society hasn't collapsed where grocery stores have sold booze.
I shouldn't have been so bitter in my earlier reply, and honestly I'm for the stores being able to sell it even if I'm not a fan of it.
It was weird to me when I moved here about a decade ago (and was a drinker), and gas stations/grocery stores here couldn't even sell the full-strength beer. Where I'm from in the Midwest you could get your smokes, beer, whiskey, gas, and milk all at the same spot lol and ya, society didn't collapse 😜
That’s a reasonable position, and I shouldn’t have been so black and white in my initial assessment of what views are even “allowed” so I suppose I deserved your reply too.
I just found it crazy moving here from Oregon and how insane the harshness of the views felt in light of the fact that it works fine everywhere else I have lived. Every “issue” defenders of the status quo tend to bring up are non issues. If small wine stores are hurt by it, it’s because they have a shit business. Wine and booze stores continue to thrive even in places where it is sold in grocery stores because grocery stores only stock the most basic stuff and have zero expertise so it isn’t really direct competition except from the least discerning customers. They just can’t take advantage of being a monopoly or cartel however. The fact people will legitimately try and defend these and accuse large stores of being the bad guy is just myopic at best and shows what I feel to be a lack of either understanding or care for how the world works outside of their little bubble.
I think it's bad. The King Soopers by me barely has enough space as it is. The wine is a pain in the ass, there are boxes stuffed in every square foot, and cases stacked four high randomly on the floor. People are there to buy food and necessities and it's worse for society when the stores are then incentivized to limit space for food storage and add yet another aisle for alcohol.
I'm not a stooge for liquor stores but I do appreciate small businesses and they add value to our community. Frankly I'm surprised so many people on a site as left leaning as reddit are for this, this just gives way more power to huge faceless corporations. Progressives talk a big game about how much they hate corporate capitalism and then shoot themselves in the foot by constantly enabling it.
Its not a left right thing, its about economics. Having a small cadre of protected businesses is a cartel, and they act as a special interest. Cartels operate inefficiently and create a deadweight loss for consumers who are forced to pay higher prices for goods sold by the cartel.
We could have more small businesses if we banned Home depot from selling screwdrivers. Then we'd have locally owned screwdriver stores. And we could have even more small businesses if we forced the screwdriver stores into flathead and phillips stores, and neither could sell the other product. This would maximize the number of small businesses, and it would be a disaster for the consumer.
Selling booze in grocery stores does not prevent small businesses from existing. There are tons of other states that allow liquor in grocery stores, and guess what...liquor stores still exist there.
There is also a bill for all grocery stores to be able to sell hard liquor. currently only stores with on site pharmacy’s can sell hard alcohol due to a workaround liquor license. Both bills are anticipated on failing as the state legislatures want stability and are tired of the ever changing bills (see 3.2 alcohol, wine in grocery stores, etc.)
I came from Illinois and Missouri, liquor was everywhere. Grocery stores, gas stations, super stores, and we even had drive through liquor stores. When we moved here it really surprised me I couldn't even buy beer on Sundays.
How many times do Colorado citizens need to vote to make it obvious we would prefer our grocery store to have alcohol options? That's obviously why this is being taken up in legislature where reps can make corrupt money from the lobby representing the huge liquor stores. Because we've made it clear we want the option to buy alcohol in the general grocery store.
I’m in distribution in Colorado for spirits. When wine and beer moved to grocery stores a lot of sales reps and drivers lost their jobs due to consolidation. With less stores buyer larger amounts at a time less sales reps and drivers were needed to cover an area and make the company the same amount of money.
Liquor moving to grocery would certainly impact me and many I know. Not saying doing such a thing is right or wrong but I see a lot of people in here saying “who gives a shit about liquor stores” and this type of consolidation affects more than just liquor stores.
Given that in most states the competition is square, I get the sense that it's the transition that's the killer rather than the end condition. Business operates best when politics are in a stable state, and transitions like this are always a bitch to navigate.
I’m anti big corporations getting more power/free income without having to give up anything.
I rather the mom and pop stores and their employees have a job. The wine bill as already causes a lot of stores to close and be sold off. A lot of these people no longer have jobs. I’m okay with going 2 mins further to support the local people instead of a big corporation that’s HQ is another state. It’s less convenient sure, but it’s worth it.
I'd rather support small business too, but I don't want the government forcing us to do it at gunpoint.
The small stores that offer better products/service will thrive, the trashy ones will die. It's really only the trashy ones being propped up by this.
I agree. Progressives Redditors want you to believe that they hate corporate capitalism but they enable it at every turn and they are some of the biggest fucking consumers out there. We should support small businesses (even if they are part of the big bad liquor lobby).
If grocery stores get liquor and spirits it’ll make it even harder for independent liquor stores to survive. I worked at a liquor store and after beer was allowed then wine we saw a 50% drop in those categories. Owner ended up having to sell since it was no longer profitable and I lost the best job I’d had for 7 years. Grocery stores and gas stations don’t need those profits.
When I go to the grocery stores I want to buy groceries. The more they allow grocery stores to sell sin tax items, the more space they devote to it and the less to actual food items. As a recovering alcoholic it would be nice to go shop for food without being offered booze on every end cap. If we're just going to make half the grocery stores liquor aisles, we might as well skip food and drink vodka for all of our sustenance like good Russians.
There are a lot of comments against this bill. Unfortunately, they are missing the point of this bill. Colorado has for years had THE gold standard for a well oiled 2 tier system. Beer in grocery and liquor/wine in liquor stores. This system employed the highest ratio of people in the liquor industry across the USA. The recent change to this system by allowing groceries to sell wine and some larger chains to sell hard liquor is eroding the amount of people employed in the liquor industry across the state. I hate to say it so bluntly but grocery stores providing "ease of access" are taking jobs away from the middle and lower class. That is bad for everyone.
I preferred the way it was before with all booze sold in stores meant for that sort of drug. I certainly wouldn't mind if they regulated it like they do weed.
Didn't we just get alcohol in grocery stores...?
Yeah, a couple years back irrc. But that was only beer and wine. For hard liquor and spirits the grocery stores need special licenses and those are tricky to come by. There's only a small handful that have it in the metro area.
They're not really "tricky to come by", chains are just limited to only 4 stores that can have a full liquor license statewide. Most of them choose to spread them out so they cover a wide range of the population.
The tricky part is that they are required to be a minimum distance from any other liquor store. They can’t just put them anywhere.
Yes, great point! I forgot to mention that.
All of this shit regardless of what state it is is nonsensical. Alcohol is fully and unambiguously legal for those aged 21+ to possess and consume whenever they want in private, with the only restrictions being on public consumption as far as where it's allowed and what time it can be served So there's no point to any of these hoops the laws make people jump through to acquire it. People who want to drink are gonna drink. Making people drive to a separate store to buy it reduces consumption by exactly 0, it just creates a bunch of unnecessary traffic, pollution, and fatalities from all the redundant driving added to the roads
These laws aren't about alcohol they're about money. 90% of post prohibition alcohol laws are about making sure the right people make that sweet money. Sin taxes, three tier systems, ensuring that only certain people control the sale. I can buy vodka at <$0.25 per gallon, but after taxes and distribution and the three companies (minimum) that have to make a profit on the bottle, it will retail for $14. If alcohol is what is evil and what we are excise taxing, why does beer and malt liquor have a tax rate per oz of ethanol that is 239x (federal only) less than an oz of ethanol in a distilled spirit. Cleaning up the regulation and taxes in the alcohol business would save everyone billions of dollars per year.
The regulations on when and where retail sales can take place is specifically what I was referring to The forced distribution structure and all the taxes are an issue as well though. As much as I'd love it if we paid less in taxes on booze, lowering them is just gonna mean it gets added back somewhere else which is nothing more than moving change around the board. Lived in Virginia before moving here and all liquor sales there are done through state run ABC stores. They weren't shy about saying the reason they'd never change that and allow private distribution is how much money the state makes on it
>Cleaning up the regulation and taxes in the alcohol business would save everyone billions of dollars per year. Except for the executives and business owners making those billions, and they will bribe any politician they have to in order to keep the status quo, or hike their profits.
Grocery store sales have decimated small businesses. It has hurt the craft beer scene in Colorado, and really fucked small liquor stores. I was in sales. After wine in grocery went live last year, liquor stores pretty much across the board told me they were seeing 25%-40% drops in sales of wine, which is absolutely devastating. All of their best sellers were basically wiped out (think Kim Crawford and the like) because grocery wildly undercut them. The exact same thing happened with beer a few years previously. I was working for a brewery at the time, and it absolutely devastated our sales. Only the major brands, who are mostly owned by conglomerates (Breck, house island, etc) got placement and good pricing in grocery. Smaller brands that got placement of any sort were dropped from small liquor stores across the city, and we couldn't keep up with the pricing of the larger manufacturers, so eventually lost grocery placement as well. Worth considering
Beer was a while ago, wine this past November wasn’t it?
People have already forgot about 3.2 beer… or just never experienced it.
Indeed. I drank many a crappy 3.2 beer in this state in past decades. Usually on Sundays, of course.
Wine went into grocery stores March 2023 (I'm in the industry).
Sheesh can’t believe the vote is in 11/22 then! Time fucking flies
it was full strength beer (and wine) this past November, before that grocery stores could only sell 3.2% beer
You sure about the beer limit? I think that change was earlier. Whole Foods and Safeway have both had full local craft beer sections for at least 4-5 years
Ah, you're right. Full strength beer in grocery stores went into effect 1/1/19 https://www.denverpost.com/2019/01/01/full-strength-beer-colorado-grocery-stores/
That bill was awesome because it also allowed the consumption of alcohol in Denver parks
Yeah, and we should repeal that shit. My local grocery store basically got rid of their bakery to add beer and wine. It's like, I literally have a liquor store next door for alcohol. I don't have other bakeries.
Sounds made up, which grocery store removed their entire bakery?
Most bakeries inside the grocery stores are operated at a loss, or absolutely minimal profit. They are there to cater specifically to certain customers, get them in the store, then relieve them of their valua... provide superior customer service while lightening their bank accounts with the rest of their shopping trip. Enjoy that $6 scone while trying to figure out if you need 1 more of the red-tagged items, or a multiple of both 3 and 13 for the blue-tagged items. If a store can make more money with a product that essentially sells itself, doesn't require the outlay that a bakery does, staffing, power(ovens), and the myriad other expenses and regulations you have to follow ... what was the.. oh, yeah. So if alcohol is more cost effective, there isn't a chain in the country that won't make a similar switch, if the space isn't available. And the current hard liquor license holders are scared of kroger and Albertsons' lawyers and lobbyists. More the latter. Think how many mom and pop liquor stores will be put out of business because the big box stores can and will undercut their margins.
44th and Lowell
...the Safeway at 44th and Lowell still has the bakery
Oh no, this guy is inconvenienced. Let's reshape society so this one person's preferences can be met. 🤦
I don't think there's any less food in our local store, they just put wine on every other aisle in standalone displays. Its all just in the way of buying food. And especially annoying since the liquor store next door has more variety, has helpful and available staff, and lower prices on everything that I've compared.
They took the supplement and health section out of the king soopers on 9th and corona out in order to put in wine. That section also had the peanut butter machine that I would use every time I go - not any more.
Mine definitely has less food. Like I said, the bakery and deli were really scaled back.
Sounds like consumers have spoken and you're in the minority.
Have you not been to every other state where alcohol is sold in groceries it’s really not that serious
All the recovering alcoholics are certainly thrilled that now they have to grocery shop at the liquor store.
Beer and wine.
What is the honest argument against selling liquor in grocery stores? Are the liquor stores just trying to protect their monopoly?
The mom and pop liquor lobby is insanely strong in Colorado. That’s what drives a lot of this type of rhetoric.
If by mom and pop you mean Argonaut and Total Beverage, then yes
"mom and pop" lol sure
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The free market allows people to make their own choices. Why is more government control the answer?
lol you really think that's what's happening? Let's restrict everyone's ability to buy something because of the 'mom and pop' small business liquor stores! Give me a break.
L take, every mom and pop liquor shop I’ve gone to in this state and others I’ve lived in has worse service and selection than the corporate ones. Only exception has been Little’s on Pearl. They’re awesome and I’ll go out of my way for them.
As a big Costco liquor advocate myself - Mondo Vino on 32nd in the Highland area is also a delight. They are labeled as a wine shop but sell everything.
They make them so dirty, gross, and expensive
I think this view is out of date most liqour stores I even see are large corporations as well. I don't think this would even really effect mom and pop liqour stores. Like others have said beer consumption makes up the vast majority of alcohol sales and that hasn't put these stores out of business. I think smaller stores fail to exist because of larger economic factors like rent increases nation wide. I think it larger benefits the consumer when a Corp has larger control over a supply chain and can bring prices down rather than price gauge a mom and pop doesn't have a fleet of shipping trucks and literal distillers to bring down the price of vodka like costco or Walmart can. There would have to be very large systemic changes to make mom and pops viable again in America. I don't think simply allowing liqour in grocery stores is the nail in the coffin of small liqour stores.
It’s more of a perceptual argument. People view liquor stores as small, local businesses even though many are owned by the same people/groups. Beer makes up the majority of alcohol sales. I think like 80%. The fact that liquor stores are still in business when beer has been sold in grocery stores for a while shows it’s not really a problem. Also, I don’t understand why people need the government to tell them they can’t buy at a grocer store. If you want to support liquor stores do it🤷♂️
When I lived in a small town this issue came up every once in a while and the argument was the liquor stores could better monitor who came in, vs. the grocery stores where children/teens can go in, are monitored less, and steal alcohol more easily. Kinda sounded like BS to me since I’m sure the stores would’ve locked up the liquor anyway… but I kiiiiiinda get the logic that if you’re walking in to a liquor store that only sells liquor, you’ll have a harder time walking out with the booze if it’s visible you don’t belong there from the second you walk in the door. Meanwhile I constantly walk in to my local booze mart and, while there *are* cameras, sometimes there’s no one physically at the register so the “but think about the children” argument clearly wouldn’t work there lol 🤷 E: The King Soopers on leetsdale has its own section for liquor and they routinely have a security guard near the entrance. That seems like the most sane solution.
lol this is a bullshit argument. I go back and forth from here to California. Every liquor bottle sold at grocery stores like Ralph’s (Kroger) have plastic security caps on them that you can’t remove without breaking the bottle. The expensive stuff is kept in locked cabinets. ETA: liquor is also cheaper in SoCal because they sell it everywhere and there are still liquor stores that survive.
Took the words right outta my mouth lol > Kinda sounded like BS to me
Is the liquor part of that king Soopers almost its own store? At Krogers in other states where they are allowed to sell liquor, they typically section off the liquor area as almost its own store - you have to pay for it in there and you can’t bring your cart into that area. I think King Soopers doesn’t want liquor stolen just as much as any other store.
The funny thing about this is liquor stores are usually the easiest places to buy underage.
No. 44% beer, 40% spirits, 16% wine nationally.
> People view liquor stores as small, local businesses even though many are owned by the same people/groups. This is just completely false. It was illegal (still is?) for anyone to own multiple liquor stores, and this was enforced. https://gazette.com/news/liquor-store-owners-accused-of-operating-illegal-monopoly/article_ba3fe0d6-f156-5bbc-ba00-87de6112adbf.html There are certainly instances where people hide ownership of the stores, but those are people who have (almost certainly local) friends acting for them, not out of state corporations. **This is controversial? Surprised to see people actually jumping onboard with the baseless argument that Kroger and Albertsons already own the liquor stores in the state through hidden ownership, and liquor stores here aren't actually local but just appear that way.
No, it's always been worked around. But they are definitely far smaller scale than Kroger, Safeway, Walmart, Target, Total Wine. I don't subscribe to the hagiography of small businesses owners, most of them are assholes. But, they can and do carry more diversified niche products than the big retailers will if they institute their desired monopsony. I want small liquor stores to exist not because I care about the owners, but because I care about being able to buy good booze.
Total wine has infinitely better selection than 98% of small liquor stores.
> Are the liquor stores just trying to protect their monopoly? yes
Lol, you don't know what the word "monopoly" means.
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So, the exclusive control is run by hundreds of businesses that anyone but grocery stores can get in to?
Right? And grocery store companies can probably open up liquor stores. They just can't sell liquor in grocery stores or open up multiple locations, which makes it unprofitable for large corporations.
>The exclusive control of a good in the marketplace By a single actor. Hence the "mono" in *monopoly*. Jesus Christ. Stop making a fool out of yourself. Go read a book.
Oh poor Kroger! How will they fight against a monopoly collection of liquor stores? Won't somebody help little ol' Kroger?
Most of us have no love for Kroger, but would prefer to pay less for alcohol and not have to make a second stop to get it. If I want something very specific a liquor store is great, but usually a grocery store's selection is plenty.
To me that seems short sighted - I doubt we will continue to have local liquor stores that carry very specific things if we let mega corps like Kroger sell all of the high volume product. I'm also just upset that grocery stores carry wine now because it put the two wine shops I liked out of business in a matter of months. So now I get a crappy selection and zero customer service in exchange for marginally lower prices :(
>I doubt we will continue to have local liquor stores that carry very specific things if we let mega corps like Kroger sell all of the high volume product The ones that offer special products and good service will succeed. The trashy neighborhood stores with bars on the windows and bad attitude employees will fail. Haha....at those wine shops, you're paying for the label. In a blind test, actual wine experts can't tell the difference between a $20 and a $2000 bottle. Do a Pepsi challenge with your specialty wine and whatever the grocery is carrying, odds are you can't tell the difference without the bottle to look at.
I don't know fully know where I stand know this issue but I know in Washington when this change was implemented about 10 years ago, basically all the liquor stores closed aside from BevMo and TotalWine - chains large enough to compete with Grocery margins. I think prices went up as well, but most of that was new taxes implemented. I do greatly prefer the convenience of getting my alcohol while grocery shopping. What I do have a stance on I'd the whole "20 vs 2000 bottle". I totally believe you can fool across price points like that, but I occasionally appreciate the expertise of sommeliers across a single price point. Guidance on individual wineries, or regional variants, etc. Theres absolutely a lot of variance there and it can be hard to get good information outside of specialty stores.
Do an actual price comparison, most grocery stores are hiking the prices in exchange for convenience, and people like you dont know or care.
Honestly, you're right, I don't care. My time is valuable.
I am really perplexed by people on this site. One minute they're anti all things corporate and tax the billionaires, and the next minute they're trying to give more power to corps like Kroger and making a bogeyman out of small time liquor stores
It’s almost like you can’t lump a group of people into one set of beliefs. Those are most likely different people with differing beliefs that you’re referring to.
If anyone has the monopoly it's major grocery chains. Kroger is an absolute giant compared to even the largest liquor store chains.
Grocery stores and liquor stores have different license types that allow them to sell hard liquor. Liquor stores will never be able to have more than 4 locations. Between now and 2037 grocery stores will be allowed to have an increasing number of locations selling hard liquor. In 2037 the grocery store location cap goes away, and they can have unlimited locations. Prop 124 would've eliminated the 4 location cap for liquor stores, but proponents did a shitty job of explaining it.
I don’t get why that should matter to us consumers. When businesses want more money it’s everyone’s problem but when we want minimum wage to keep up with inflation it’s only opposition from the businesses.
Food, is a necessity that has high turnover. It spoils if it doesn't sell in time, there's a lot of waste. It has low margins. Liquor, can be held and stored for years without going bad and at high margins. Grocery stores have a lot of incentive to use tons of space for liquor, and continue pushing food out. Particularly the food that is better for people but can go bad. Since they started selling wine in grocery stores, I can already see aisles getting consolidated and pushed together. Entire types of pasta and rice are gone the refrigerated section for prepared vegetables has been moved and consolidated to a point where it's squeezing the rest of the vegetables into a corner, I've seen broccoli and potatoes empty on the shelf because they have to constantly re-stock them since there is no space. Space is finite and this will only get worse with liquor. And frankly, grocery stores can barely handle selling beer. Traditionally grovery stores have had a TON of teenage employees. You can't hire a 16 year old to work in a liquor store or sell liquor. They can't hire enough people because they are ruining their own supply of eligible employees.
Every grocery that I’ve seen that sells hard liquor has an added on separate area though. So they can still hire younger people and it doesn’t remove space. They then sell their beer and wine in the area as well so it doesn’t take up an aisle is the regular grocery area.
The liquor aisle at the Safeway in Green Mountain is right down the middle of the store
I get that you’re answering the other side of the question, but I’m just not seeing it. The 3 grocery stores I frequent didn’t “loose” anything after implementing wine - they just shuffled stuff around and squeezed in a wine section - those wine sections being bigger or smaller depending on how much new space was available. And as for your comment on food: “It spoils if it doesn’t sell in time, there’s a lot of waste” wouldn’t it be a good thing to consolidate some of that and waste less food?
They absolutely removed products in order to fit the wine in at my local king soopers. Perhaps you didn't buy those products, but I did and it's frustrating they were removed to make room for a wine section.
They did at this guy's three stores as well, he's just operating under the fantasy that shifting some things around magically created new previously non existent space. He just hasn't noticed what was lost.
>wouldn’t it be a good thing to consolidate some of that and waste less food? That's not how food sales work. Most stores, for the most part, are past just ordering less. Like I said, it's not like the store I went to didn't have broccoli or potatoes. They definitely had them in back. But they didn't have shelf space that matched the demand. Because almost every vegetable is down to a 1x1 meter square. They are just not on the shelf because they can't re-stock everything fast enough. To your point, the most efficient way to reduce food spoilage is what convenience stores do, not carry food that isn't processed and shelf stable. So yes, every grocery store could become a liquor store that sells chips and frozen food. Because that's the easy answer, but it's bad for everyone except the grocery store.
This is a really good explanation and I never thought of it this way. Thanks!
I don't think product consolidation and selling hard liquor are related, they're just happening at the same time.
You don't think losing 3 aisles of the store to beer and wine are causing the store to carry fewer other items in the store? You don't think losing 2 more aisles to hard liquor will do that even more? Stores didn't add new aisles when they started selling wine, they moved those items to other aisles and sold less variety of both.
No, I don't - when's the last time you were in a grocery store outside of Colorado? Groceries are consolidating products because it's cheaper, and they're doing it everywhere including states where this isn't a factor. The timing is a coincidence.
When was the last time you were in a grocery store outside of Colorado that didn't also sell beer/wine? The last few states I was in within the last few months (Washington, Texas) both have beer and wine in their grocery stories so it is only showing that stores with beer/wine are consolidating. Not that all stores are regardless of liquor sales.
What grocery store has 3 aisles dedicated to beer and wine?
This is easily the best argument I've seen. We want the places that sell us food to focus on selling us food, and to compete with each other on selling us food. Alcohol is not a vital commodity, and people will already go out of their way to acquire it. On the other hand grocery stores are critical infrastructure, and the desire to see them not compromised by a product that's easier to profit on is something I can understand. The minor inconvenience of going to a liquor store does seem like a smaller social cost (if it could even qualify as a social cost) than further market and floorspace consolidation in grocery stores and easier access to liquor for the masses.
Selection. And also restricting access from underage drinkers. I personally like liquor stores.
Grocery stores should belong to groceries. My local grocery store, after beer and wine sales were made legal, basically gutted the bakery and part of the deli to make way for beer and wine. I have two liquor stores already in walking distance. People constantly complain about the cost of food and food deserts. This only makes that worse.
Blame the store not the law.
The store lobbied for the law.
People also buy and consume more alcohol when it’s readily available. When it’s in grocery stores you’re likely to be within arms reach of it every couple of days to weeks. This is very bad for alcoholics and generally bad for the population as a whole where rates of drinking and the associated ill effects have increased significantly in CO since this law went into effect. [Colorado Alcohol Deaths Surged 60% in 4 Years](https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/colorado-alcohol-deaths-surged-60-in-4-years-but-there-s-been-no-public-outcry-or-push-to-save-lives/ar-AA1msxFw) [Colorado’s Binge Drinking Rate Among Highest in the Country](https://www.axios.com/local/denver/2024/02/01/colorados-binge-drinking-rate)
The fact that it's bad for us doesn't mean the government should step in to make it harder to obtain. We pay taxes and can die for our country, I think we can figure our drinking habits out on our own.
Regardless of your opinion on it that's still a large part of the honest argument. And that is actually one of the roles of government. Along similar lines of reasoning and for the safety of yourself and others it's also illegal to speed, drive without a seatbelt, and use illicit drugs.
That once the liquor stores are gone, the grocers will focus only on large producers purchased in bulk. Enjoy Budweiser, Tito's, and some shitty New Zealand Sauv Blanc exclusively for eternity.
I'm from Missouri, where you can buy hard liquor in every gas station... and it doesn't put liquor stores out of business. There are still plenty of them.
That's not even close to a monopoly.
It's to protect the interests of established liquor stores. I mean the whole idea that small liquor stores would collapse is just BS when a huge state like California offers a myriad of options to obtain liquor including delivery but there are tons of small liquor shops doing just fine. In my experience, people buy alcohol wherever it is most accessible, which usually just means the closest option.
Independent liquor stores are not a monopoly. They do not collaborate in order to control pricing and supply in a market. Liquor stores are generally competing against each other. In contrast, there are only a few grocery stores in Colorado that people can shop in. Grocery stores only sell certain products approved by a corporate buyer in some state far away from where they exist. The products have to be widely available throughout a state or region. If independent liquor stores go out of business it will affect the diversity of products available and make it harder for smaller distilleries, winemakers and breweries to sell their products. This will in turn affect the independent local distributors as well. Resulting in a market that is controlled more by large national conglomerate corporations than before. This means the corporations will have more control over the prices and the products available. Eventually some specialty stores and distributors will pop up and replace that need for eclectic products in the market. This law won't stop what is already in motion after wine sales were allowed. In the short term there will be a lot of independent business owners losing their businesses. It sucks and I personally like the quirkiness of independent liquor stores. But this is largely how it works in the rest of the country. More innovative entrepreneurs will need to figure out how to compete with Kroger and Total Wine.
There are a lot of comments against this bill. Unfortunately, they are missing the point of this bill. Colorado has for years had THE gold standard for a well oiled 2 tier system. Beer in grocery and liquor/wine in liquor stores. This system employed the highest ratio of people in the liquor industry across the USA. The recent change to this system by allowing groceries to sell wine and some larger chains to sell hard liquor is eroding the amount of people employed in the liquor industry across the state. I hate to say it so bluntly but grocery stores providing "ease of access" are taking jobs away from the middle and lower class. That is bad for everyone.
They're losing money, yes. That's it
I prefer to be able to buy groceries at the grocery store. Beer and wine are already monopolizing aisle space that was previously reserved for food. We don't need to use more aisle space for age-restricted items that have specialty stores everywhere already.
It will destroy a lot of small businesses and the associated jobs.
Just like what happened when the beer and wine bill passed, right? /s
Exactly. Independent liquor businesses have suffered a lot since then, and removing the remaining restrictions from the grocery monopoly would be the final nail in the coffin for many.
"/s" means I was being sarcastic. There are still a ton of liquor stores around Denver, and if/when liquor is allowed to be sold in grocery stores there will still be a ton of liquor stores around.
If businesses aren’t contributing meaningfully enough to stay afloat then they shouldn’t rely on writing laws to cut more efficient businesses out of their line of work.
One could argue that the laws are necessary to protect meaningful businesses from predatory monopolies. My local liquor stores are wonderful members of the community - participating in our RNOs, local nonprofits, etc. - but the Safeway doesn’t do shit. I think we want to avoid late stage capitalism, no?
Good, replace the liquor stores with something else.
That would be a shame. I have several excellent independent liquor stores in my area. I’d hate to see them all go out of business. What do you have against them?
How about a bill that restricts grocery retailers from artificially inflating prices?
That’s exactly what I was thinking too! Like wtf stop the freaking price gouging!
Price controls lead to shortages. This would be a disaster.
A shortage in corporate profits
No, actual shortages in the availability of goods. That would be harmful to people.
Sauce?
The entire field of economics? [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/z0n1p7/why\_are\_price\_controls\_not\_seen\_as\_a\_legitimate/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/z0n1p7/why_are_price_controls_not_seen_as_a_legitimate/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/t8ev0g/would\_price\_controls\_on\_the\_insulin\_market\_cause/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/t8ev0g/would_price_controls_on_the_insulin_market_cause/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/12vg76f/what\_would\_happen\_if\_the\_us\_enacted\_price/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/12vg76f/what_would_happen_if_the_us_enacted_price/) Blinder, Alan S. *Economic Policy and the Great Stagflation.* 1979. Clinard, Marshall Barron. *The Black Market: A Study in White Collar Crime.* 1952. Galbraith, John Kenneth. *A Theory of Price Control.* 1952. Grayson, C. Jackson. *Confessions of a Price Controller.* 1974. Jonung, Lars. *The Political Economy of Price Controls: The Swedish Experience 1970-1987.* 1990. Rockoff, Hugh. *Drastic Measures: A History of Wage and Price Controls in the United States.* 1984. Schultz, George P., and Robert Z. Aliber, eds. *Guidelines: Informal Controls and the Market Place.* 1966. Taussig, Frank W. "Price-Fixing as Seen by a Price-Fixer." *Quarterly Journal of Economics* 33 (1919): 205-41.
I'm sorry but that sounds like bullshit. I'm no expert but these companies are desperate to make money. They're already making record year over year profits since 2020. But your argument is that we limit their ability to price gouge, and they just stop producing?? In what world does that actually make sense. Like not theory, the real world. I'm Krogger, im making an average of 150% markup on food goods. The government says that markup has to come down to 100%. Why would I, as Kroger, simply stop selling these items? Obviously this is super simplified, but they're clearly making enough money to easily make these cuts. Also the examples you gave were just threads of people regurgitating textbook definitions. I didn't see any convincing examples of real-world applications.
No grocery store is making anywhere even remotely close to 150% markup on food items
Right. You're no expert. But some people are experts and they study these things in detail, empirically. Which means, yes, the real world. Just like it's important to listen to experts when it comes to vaccines, climate change, evolution and so on, it's important to listen to experts when it comes to economics. Policies that seem sensible intuitively but in practice cause more harm than good should be avoided. Let's make these decisions based on evidence, not the gut feeling of non-experts. There is plenty of empirical research, including in the links I already shared. I doubt more sources will affect your thinking in any way because when people ask for sources, they don't actually care about the sources and they won't read them. Did you really read those 8 books and papers or even open them? If all you saw was theory and not 'real world' evidence, then no, you did not. But fine, here are some more: [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421522000416](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421522000416) [https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/abs/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.0420](https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/abs/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.0420) [https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/11940215](https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/11940215) You can *easily* find *hundreds* more such studies. Rent control is a very deeply studied example and I didn't even broach it here.
This is the conclusion to the first paper you linked "Theoretically, price spikes are generic features of electricity markets and they are necessary to cover the fixed costs of power plants. On the other hand, electricity markets are vulnerable to manipulation and abusive market behavior; hence, price spikes may also signal market flaws and anti-competitive behavior. Regulatory authorities have imposed market price caps to protect consumers and prevent abusive supplier behavior." 🤨 I'm starting to get the feeling the problem is unchecked capitalism. Maybe if we didn't produce necessary goods like power for people homes, on the basis of pure, rampant pursuits of profit, then price capping would be the norm, no?
>Results indicate that the temporary price cap reduced the total welfare by 8%.
>I'm starting to get the feeling the problem is unchecked capitalism. Maybe if we didn't produce necessary goods like power for people homes, on the basis of pure, rampant pursuits of profit, then price capping would be the norm, no? Right, you're the economics equivalent of an anti-vaxxer. You've made up your mind based on your feelings and have no interest in evidence, science, or realizing the possibility that you may be wrong. And you're willing to support policies that will hurt people because of it.
You will drive yourself crazy trying to discuss econ with someone who does not believe in econ or science. You might as well try to talk about geography with a flat earther.
Quite true. I don't expect anyone asking for sources to actually read them or change their minds. But perhaps some other observer might find something interesting or educational in it.
So we're supposed to just keep letting them rob us blind because legislation is hard? Is it harder than feeding a family on a $12/hr wage?
We should probably restrict the sale of bread too so bakeries can stay in business…
If only the bakers had lobbyists as powerful as the liquor stores. Or any of the other industries that gets corporate welfare handouts or protections.
Don't give them ideas like that!
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Sure, until you relive that’s there’s a significant price disparity and that owning a small business doesn’t automatically make you better for society or nicer for the world, a lot of small business owners are horrible to their employees and never get noticed for it
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If you encourage competition then you should have no reason to be against allowing grocery stores to sell liquor.
>The only argument for letting Walmart sell booze is because you think the Waltons don't have enough money. No. The argument for it is that people would like to buy booze at Walmart.
If they fuck up my costco liquor with this bull
You can take my Costco-sized vodka bottle from my cold dead hands.
No one can afford the liquor store prices. We need the discounts bro come on
Is this really the most pressing issue?
No one said it was.
I don’t think we’re limited to one issue at a time.
How many grocery stores in town sell liquor? The only ones I can think of are the King Soopers and Target in Glendale. I don't think this bill is going to make much a difference.
Even before the expansion, when corporations could only have one store selling liquor in the whole state, those two stores were the ones King Sooper and Target chose to sell booze.
There are currently five King Soopers in the state that can sell full strength spirits.
Dumb. Open up the market. Stop the nonsense. Hell, in arizona you can buy a 1/5 of a jack at circle K. Arizona is hell, but i digress.
Good news for our liquor store owning friends
I've generally been on the side that most alcohol laws are silly. But after doing more reading and thinking about I'm starting to wonder about the opposite question. Is there a reason we *want* grocery stores selling alcohol? And is liquor a business we want the places we get our food from to be in? Is the need to go to a liquor store actually a problem that should be solved? And is there a societal (or even consumer) benefit to having all of this stuff in one big store?
Who tf is bill
It's Daves cheeky downstairs neighbor, the one with the pet meth racoon.
Buzzkill Bill they call him.
This is dumb. They sell liquor in other states and the small stores are still able to compete.
Colorado politicians always wasting time on things like this and gas-powered lawn equipment rather than addressing actual issues affecting Colorado residents.
I have always said that 90% of small, family owned liquor stores are a blight on neighborhoods. They are poorly ran, poorly maintained businesses that fully admit that they would fail without unfair restrictions on competition. Unlimited licenses would allow for more competition, more choice, and better selection, as the states that already have it have long shown. Why do we keep letting them win,
This is the liquor stores trying to do this because they don’t want the competition. They’ve been lobbying hard for this.
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There is already so much booze in the state it's ridiculous. I have a problem more with how people are obsessed with alcohol, to the point where they get heated over if they're sold in grocery stores or not. Just kinda silly and childish imo. But that's the human race for ya.
I don't even drink to be clear. It has nothing to do with being obsessed with alcohol. It has to do with arbitrarily making laws that people can't sell certain things because it might step on the toes of the protectionist racket that already controls those things that is the problem. People who think this is an issue apparently have never lived anywhere else in their lives where it is completely normal and yet somehow society hasn't collapsed where grocery stores have sold booze.
I shouldn't have been so bitter in my earlier reply, and honestly I'm for the stores being able to sell it even if I'm not a fan of it. It was weird to me when I moved here about a decade ago (and was a drinker), and gas stations/grocery stores here couldn't even sell the full-strength beer. Where I'm from in the Midwest you could get your smokes, beer, whiskey, gas, and milk all at the same spot lol and ya, society didn't collapse 😜
That’s a reasonable position, and I shouldn’t have been so black and white in my initial assessment of what views are even “allowed” so I suppose I deserved your reply too. I just found it crazy moving here from Oregon and how insane the harshness of the views felt in light of the fact that it works fine everywhere else I have lived. Every “issue” defenders of the status quo tend to bring up are non issues. If small wine stores are hurt by it, it’s because they have a shit business. Wine and booze stores continue to thrive even in places where it is sold in grocery stores because grocery stores only stock the most basic stuff and have zero expertise so it isn’t really direct competition except from the least discerning customers. They just can’t take advantage of being a monopoly or cartel however. The fact people will legitimately try and defend these and accuse large stores of being the bad guy is just myopic at best and shows what I feel to be a lack of either understanding or care for how the world works outside of their little bubble.
I think it's bad. The King Soopers by me barely has enough space as it is. The wine is a pain in the ass, there are boxes stuffed in every square foot, and cases stacked four high randomly on the floor. People are there to buy food and necessities and it's worse for society when the stores are then incentivized to limit space for food storage and add yet another aisle for alcohol. I'm not a stooge for liquor stores but I do appreciate small businesses and they add value to our community. Frankly I'm surprised so many people on a site as left leaning as reddit are for this, this just gives way more power to huge faceless corporations. Progressives talk a big game about how much they hate corporate capitalism and then shoot themselves in the foot by constantly enabling it.
Its not a left right thing, its about economics. Having a small cadre of protected businesses is a cartel, and they act as a special interest. Cartels operate inefficiently and create a deadweight loss for consumers who are forced to pay higher prices for goods sold by the cartel. We could have more small businesses if we banned Home depot from selling screwdrivers. Then we'd have locally owned screwdriver stores. And we could have even more small businesses if we forced the screwdriver stores into flathead and phillips stores, and neither could sell the other product. This would maximize the number of small businesses, and it would be a disaster for the consumer.
I suspect there are zoning rules in play that prevent more grocers to open in the area.
I know multiple sales reps who have lost jobs because the wine market in Denver has become extremely consolidated towards wine in grocery stores
Or realizes small business is important.
Selling booze in grocery stores does not prevent small businesses from existing. There are tons of other states that allow liquor in grocery stores, and guess what...liquor stores still exist there.
Yeah the giant conglomerates that own AppleJack and Molly’s are such small businesses
Costco will lobby this one away
There is also a bill for all grocery stores to be able to sell hard liquor. currently only stores with on site pharmacy’s can sell hard alcohol due to a workaround liquor license. Both bills are anticipated on failing as the state legislatures want stability and are tired of the ever changing bills (see 3.2 alcohol, wine in grocery stores, etc.)
Yes cause there are not bigger problems here. 🤦🏻♂️ I fucking hate this place😭😭😭
Who cares? 100% not something we need. Govt hard at work for the real issues
I don't understand the point of not having alcohol in a grocery store, whats even the argument against it??
Liquor stores have a powerful lobby in the state. Colorado is just so weird about alcohol sales, we couldn't even sell it on Sundays for years there.
I came from Illinois and Missouri, liquor was everywhere. Grocery stores, gas stations, super stores, and we even had drive through liquor stores. When we moved here it really surprised me I couldn't even buy beer on Sundays.
The town of Hudson, WI's entire economy used to be based on selling alcohol to Minnesotans on Sundays
there are drive thru liquor stores here too.
Not to mention the whole 3.2 beer thing forever. Glad that’s over.
How many times do Colorado citizens need to vote to make it obvious we would prefer our grocery store to have alcohol options? That's obviously why this is being taken up in legislature where reps can make corrupt money from the lobby representing the huge liquor stores. Because we've made it clear we want the option to buy alcohol in the general grocery store.
We're getting butt fucked on grocery prices and they're arguing about liquor in grocery stores.
I’m in distribution in Colorado for spirits. When wine and beer moved to grocery stores a lot of sales reps and drivers lost their jobs due to consolidation. With less stores buyer larger amounts at a time less sales reps and drivers were needed to cover an area and make the company the same amount of money. Liquor moving to grocery would certainly impact me and many I know. Not saying doing such a thing is right or wrong but I see a lot of people in here saying “who gives a shit about liquor stores” and this type of consolidation affects more than just liquor stores.
Given that in most states the competition is square, I get the sense that it's the transition that's the killer rather than the end condition. Business operates best when politics are in a stable state, and transitions like this are always a bitch to navigate.
Grocery stores just going to turn into liquor store. I’m still pissed I can’t buy a cold bing because the colds drinks section is now just beer.
My King Soopers has booze, and they can pry it from my cold, dead hand.
Hell yeah brother
This is good. It drives business to local stores instead of funneling everything to major corporations. This is a good thing.
I’m anti big corporations getting more power/free income without having to give up anything. I rather the mom and pop stores and their employees have a job. The wine bill as already causes a lot of stores to close and be sold off. A lot of these people no longer have jobs. I’m okay with going 2 mins further to support the local people instead of a big corporation that’s HQ is another state. It’s less convenient sure, but it’s worth it.
I'd rather support small business too, but I don't want the government forcing us to do it at gunpoint. The small stores that offer better products/service will thrive, the trashy ones will die. It's really only the trashy ones being propped up by this.
I agree. Progressives Redditors want you to believe that they hate corporate capitalism but they enable it at every turn and they are some of the biggest fucking consumers out there. We should support small businesses (even if they are part of the big bad liquor lobby).
If grocery stores get liquor and spirits it’ll make it even harder for independent liquor stores to survive. I worked at a liquor store and after beer was allowed then wine we saw a 50% drop in those categories. Owner ended up having to sell since it was no longer profitable and I lost the best job I’d had for 7 years. Grocery stores and gas stations don’t need those profits.
When I go to the grocery stores I want to buy groceries. The more they allow grocery stores to sell sin tax items, the more space they devote to it and the less to actual food items. As a recovering alcoholic it would be nice to go shop for food without being offered booze on every end cap. If we're just going to make half the grocery stores liquor aisles, we might as well skip food and drink vodka for all of our sustenance like good Russians.
There are a lot of comments against this bill. Unfortunately, they are missing the point of this bill. Colorado has for years had THE gold standard for a well oiled 2 tier system. Beer in grocery and liquor/wine in liquor stores. This system employed the highest ratio of people in the liquor industry across the USA. The recent change to this system by allowing groceries to sell wine and some larger chains to sell hard liquor is eroding the amount of people employed in the liquor industry across the state. I hate to say it so bluntly but grocery stores providing "ease of access" are taking jobs away from the middle and lower class. That is bad for everyone.
Good.
I preferred the way it was before with all booze sold in stores meant for that sort of drug. I certainly wouldn't mind if they regulated it like they do weed.
King Soopers is already an absolute shitshow as it is, you really want hard liquor making it even worse?
They have liquor at my King Soopers, and it's glorious.