Store Cafes Weigh 6-Pack Sales
By Jim Martin, Erie Times-News, Pa.
Mar. 26–Granting restaurant liquor licenses to Wegmans Food Market Inc. could change how some people buy beer. But it won’t change everything.
If you have visions of tossing a couple of six-packs in the shopping cart and paying for it with the rest of the groceries, forget about it. This is still Pennsylvania, and things aren’t changing that much.
Wegmans, which was approved several weeks ago to sell alcohol at its West Ridge Road location and has an application pending for its Peach Street store, would be able to sell beer or wine by the glass in its in-store cafe. It could also sell beer by the six-pack or 12-pack.
What it won’t be able to do is to sell alcohol in the main part of the store and allow customers to pay for it along with their groceries, said Francesca Chapman, deputy press secretary for the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board.
“The only portion of the premises that would be licensed is the restaurant portion of the store. And they will have to have a separate cashier,” she said.
The Rochester, N.Y.-based chain hasn’t yet announced when any of its stores will begin selling beer, said Jo Natale, the company’s director of media relations.
“We have just begun planning for implementation,” she said. “Part of that is the need for minor structural changes in the cafe to comply with (state) liquor laws.”
Like a lot of people who have traveled to other states, Pete Sirianni isn’t offended by the idea of buying beer in a grocery store.
What does bother Sirianni, owner of Beer & Pop Discount Warehouse, 901 Peninsula Drive, is that he’s been operating under a system of stringent laws that seem poised to change.
Sirianni is a board member of the Malt Beverage Distributors Association of Pennsylvania, which has appealed the PLCB’s recent decision to grant the liquor licenses to six Wegmans locations in Pennsylvania.
Sirianni said his organization worries that this could be just a first step that would ultimately devalue the investment he and others have made.
“Anyone who sells a six- or a 12-pack, they are going to get a premium price for it. That doesn’t concern me,” Sirianni said “What concerns me is opening the door to putting (beer) in their actual stores. Once that happens, distributors don’t have a lot to say about it.”
Sirianni looks at it this way: He can’t sell six-packs. He can’t even sell T-shirts or sandwiches. Why should a grocery store be given free rein to compete with him?
“Distributors have built their business and invested money and time based on laws at that time,” he said. “To change that midstream is going to hurt people.”
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