Category: grocery store

bc liquor law changes

more changes were announced yesterday to bc’s liquor laws
they’re nothing we hadn’t already heard was probably coming, but there is an effective date now, confirming that the gov’t is keeping with its promise to roll out the changes next spring.
april 1, 2015 is the day.
april fool’s day seems an inauspicious day… hopefully it won’t prove to be.

click for the full news release, the highlights of which are:
 

  • For consumers, April 1, 2015, will mark the first day that grocery stores are allowed to sell liquor through the store-within-a-store model. As well, that same day, restrictions will be lifted on BC Liquor Stores, allowing them to offer refrigeration and to stay open longer hours, including on Sundays.
  • Starting April 1, 2015, all liquor retailers, including BC Liquor Stores, will purchase their product from the BC Liquor Distribution Branch (BCLDB) at a common, wholesale price. This will do away with the existing complex model that offers retailers various discounts depending on the type of retailer they are.
  • As previously announced, the rules around the relocation of liquor licences (the “five kilometre rule”) will also be lifted on April 1, 2015, to expedite the store-within-a-store option, but ultimately, it will be up to the market to determine how quickly this model is adopted.
  • The one-kilometre rule – the minimum distance between new or relocating private liquor
    stores – will be maintained and expanded to BC Liquor Stores.

  • A new price-based wholesale pricing model for wine and spirits will take effect.
  • A new volume-based wholesale pricing model for beer will take effect, with a graduated mark-up system, allowing small- and medium-sized breweries to grow their product lines and create jobs.

so what does it mean to you?
probably nothing right away.  except for being able to shop in a gov’t liquor store on a sunday come april 5th (or not, cuz that’s easter weekend).
the rest of what the liberals hath giveth is either going to take longer than the april 1st date to implement, or it isn’t going to actually mean you get what they’re legislating.
this whole push to ‘level the playing field’ sounds great, but will it?  and if it does, will it actually benefit consumers (ie you and me)?

examples:

liquor stores within grocery stores:  regardless of whether this idea excites you or not, the likelihood of getting one in vancouver is slim to none.  no new liquor licences are being released, so to sell booze in your grocery store you’ll need to buy an existing licence.  until april 1st you can’t relocate that licence outside of 5km from its current jurisdiction.  so for all those who have been buying licences in remote areas, they won’t be able to relocate them to more populous places until april 1st.  and who knows how long the pencil pushing process of actually moving it will take.  that of course presupposes that your grocery store isn’t within 1km of an existing liquor store.  in vancouver rumour has it that only two choices supermarkets are not within 1km of a liquor store.  if you live outside the lower mainland you might be more likely to get booze sales in your grocery store, provided someone thinks it’s worth paying through the nose for one of those precious existing licences and relocating it to your ‘hood.  but it’s not likely that any of these will spring into existence on april 1st.

gov’t stores being able to open longer hours and sundays and refrigerate product:  who doesn’t want liquor stores, both private and provincial, to be open longer?  no one i know!  but will it cause more people to shift away from private stores to gov’t ones if they’re open the same hours?  i guess if you live really close to a gov’t store and not a private store, sure.  for me though, beer nerd that i am, it’s all about the selection and that means it’s private stores all the way.  they love beer too, and it shows.  they don’t offer me a keith’s when i ask about ipas.  as for the refrigeration, will this mean that even fewer craft products are available at provincial stores?  i’ve heard from some people that their local store that is already allowed to refrigerate product, fills the fridge with macro lagers because ‘that’s what people want’ and relegates their paltry craft beer selection to a shelf in the back of the store.  if there’s competition for shelf space as well as fridge space, will craft beer lose out?

same wholesale pricing for all liquor sellers:  this would be great if we were told what that across-the-board wholesale price was going to be.  suzanne anton says the gov’t expects to receive the same revenue from liquor sales after april 1st as it does now, which doesn’t sound to me like any savings will be experienced by liquor sellers that they can pass along to us.  currently the shelf price at gov’t stores is what determines how much the other liquor sellers pay the distribution branch for booze.  the 670 private stores buy at a 16% discount off the shelf price.  the 12 private wine stores get 30% off and the 221 rural agency stores get 12% off.  it sounds like all the liquor sellers will be paying more now for the booze with their discount disappearing.  but shelf price does not equal wholesale price, and who knows what the wholesale price of all that delicious liquor is under the current system and what it will be under the new.  if the tax-payer is subsidizing the provincial stores, then i would assume that regardless of all distributors paying the same wholesale price it will still cost the private stores more overall to bring those products to the public and they won’t be able to lower their prices.  but even assuming they do manage to pay less for the product, it will be months before any of those savings could be able to be passed along to us.  current product will have to be sold first, ledgers balanced, inventory performed, yada, yada.  so best case scenario still leaves us a long time away from any price relief at private stores.  more likely, says the pessimist, we’ll see provincial stores creep their pricing up to where private stores are now over those first months after april 1st.

frankly i have no idea what the price-based and volume-based wholesale pricing models mean.  i’m hoping someone will tell me allllll about it sometime.  and that they’ll tell me it’s good news for craft breweries.  but i’m not holding my breath.

so colour me underwhelmed by yesterday’s announcements, and by the liberal’s approach to liquor law reform all around.

some links:

camra’s position
national post story
news 1130 story
cbc story
vancity buzz story #1, #2
ctv story (video)
ctv story (print)
province story #1, #2 and #3

one stop shopping

when will beer be coming to the shelves of british columbia’s grocery stores?
that is the question i was tasked with answering for the cbc local tv news yesterday

the answer in a nutshell:  not any time soon

the pessimistic addendum:  if at all

oh, i’m sure the legislation will be written in the spring like the liberals have promised
i’m just not sure that it will be written in such a manner as to be practicable

background – facts (and my opinionated commentary):
– the liberal government held meetings and welcomed feedback from the community about revising the province’s liquor laws (listening attentively to health and safety concerns and big business concerns, and not so attentively to stakeholders and beer advocates)
– parliamentary secretary john yap wrote a list of recommendations and delivered it to attorney general susan anton on november 25, 2013, amid a media flurry (giving the ag a couple of months to review the report before it goes public – gotta give their spin doctors time to make a silk purse out of it)
– the report went public on january 31, 2014.  it contains 73 recommended revisions, 4 of which concern selling beer, wine and spirits in grocery stores.  apparently this is the one revision most supported by british columbians
– the government accepted all 73 recomendations in the liquor policy review report
– 14 of the 73 recommendations were implemented between april 28 and june 21 (fairly equally divided between actual policy changes and housekeeping matters)
– amendments related to grocery stores were introduced in march 2014, with an anticipated delivery date of spring 2015 (in keeping with the mandate of “quick” implementation)

– in 2012 a moratorium on new liquor store licences was put in place until 2022
– there are 670 private liquor store (LRS) licences in the province
– there are 195 government liquor stores in the province
– there are 221 rural agency locations which serve communities without a government or private liquor store.  they sell bottles of beer, wine and spirits alongside food, household supplies, newspapers etc.

– manitoba and nova scotia currently allow government liquor stores to operate in grocery stores, with separate cash registers and staffed by liquor authority employees.  manitoba currently has 2 such stores, with 3 more in the works.  nova scotia has 35
– quebec allows corner stores to sell domestic and imported beer and wine

what the grocery store recommendations are:

19. The Province should develop and implement a retail model that meets consumer demands for more convenience by permitting the sale of liquor in grocery stores. Government should continue to restrict the total number of retail outlets and require separation of grocery products and liquor. This
reflects the views of health and safety advocates and the acknowledged safety benefits of restricting minors’ access to liquor.

20.  Introducing liquor in grocery stores should be phased in, giving public and private liquor stores time to adjust to the new retail model.

21.  In consultation with industry, government should develop a policy that standardizes the types of non-liquor products that can be sold in liquor retail outlets.

22.  As a grocery model is developed, government should look at consistency in operating hours for licensed, rural agency and manufacturer retail stores.

 
grocery store eligibility (from march 6, 2014 gov’t fact sheet):
– private and government stores may relocate within stores primarily engaged in the grocery business
– convenience stores will not be eligible to have a liquor store
– grocery store eligibility will continue to be developed
– two part model for liquor sales in grocery stores: liquor store within a grocery store must be a store within a store with a controlled access point and separate till.  a liquor store may also be immediately adjacent to an eligible grocery store with a connecting entrance for shoppers
– all types of liquor may be sold
– relocation criteria of remaining in the same municipality or within 5 km of the former location will be repealed
– relocation criteria prohibiting relocation of a private store to withine 1 km of an existing private store will be maintained, and beginning in 2015 this will begin to apply to government stores as well


salient points:
– the number of retail licences will remain the same
– consistency in operating hours of grocery stores, all licensees and tasting rooms
– no ability to relocate within 1 km of existing licensee
– store within a store model

collecting my thoughts:
the legislation is the better part of a year away in being released
once it is, they intend to phase it in
no new licences will be issued, so only current licensees can move their businesses into or adjacent to grocery stores
even if grocery stores and licensees are in talks currently, we wouldn’t see beer in grocery stores for at least a year

but who is going to be able to even take advantage of the legislation?
some lucky grocery store owner who also already owns a licence and is conveniently not located within a kilometre of another licensee?
i wouldn’t even know how to go about doing the math on that one, but it sure seems like a small pool

is the government looking to move their stores into grocery stores?
that could save them a whole lot on overhead…
would you be happy with your government store moving?
48% of the booze money spent in stores in bc is in the government stores, which leads me to believe that a whole lot of people are shopping in them
assuming all these people also shop at big grocery stores and have no brand loyalty to theirs, maybe they’ll be very happy to have one stop shopping
but those are quite a few assumptions…
i could see the government stores working in a grocery store, with their more limited stock
and keep the private stores independant so they can carry a broader base of products and the specialty orders that beer geeks have come to worship them for

i prefer smaller shops, and they simply would not be able to afford to have a liquor store within them, private or government
maybe they could partner with a licensee who wanted to move
and being adjacent to one would be manageable for a small store, but that would involve a whole lot of serendipity around the location
it would be less convenient for me if, for example, my government liquor store on commercial drive moved into the safeway at broadway and commercial
it would also be less convenient for me if liberty wines, the private liquor store on the drive, moved into the safeway
there is currently a private store at toby’s, which is well within 1 km of safeway, so i’m not sure either of those moves would be allowed anyway (what’s a km?  about 10 blocks? so the gov’t store and liberty would be just over a km away from toby’s currently… liberty and the gov’t store are much closer together than a km, which i guess must have been acceptable at one point)

my poor brain hurts just trying to imagine how it is all going to work out, and i haven’t even started to imagine which grocery stores around are actually large enough to find space to absorb a liquor store into themselves

when i said that i would like to see booze for sale in grocery stores this was not at all the model i was envisioning
i was picturing american grocery stores, of all sizes, that include a beer and wine aisle
where cashiers check id and the system seems to work just fine
issuing a new category of grocery store licences would be easy enough to do
you’d have the convenience of picking up a bottle or two with your groceries
and there would still be gov’t and private stores that stock a larger selection

like they have with happy hours, i think the governement has missed the point of what beer drinkers in british columbia wanted out of grocery stores selling liquor
i am interested to see how it pans out
but my breath is not being held for it to improve my life even one iota
or to happen before this time next year