A couple years ago I blogged about beer in a grocery store (sadly, this specialty grocery store has since closed citing the economy and location, I can’t say I’m surprised, it was in Lansdale). For those of you living in states with sane liquor laws, this may not be much of a shock – grocery stores sell beer, gas stations sell beer! Well, not in Pennsylvania, some of you have heard me rant before.
Here’s the deal for quick review, in Pennsylvania you buy beer at “beer supply stores” where they sell beer by the case. How do you get singles and six-packs? You go to a bar or a restaurant that sells beer to-go. There is an ounce limit on these purchases, which many stores will happy inform you that you can get around by buying the limit, taking it out to your car, and coming in to buy up to the limit again. This unto itself is a bit absurd. Grocery stores can’t sell beer. Convenience stores can’t sell beer. Beer supply stores can’t sell 6-packs or singles, and there are no specialty beer stores that sell six-packs or singles. Only bars and restaurants can sell six-packs and singles.
So, hm… what exactly is a restaurant? Who can get these licenses to sell beer? This has been hashed out by a series of cases these past few years. Apparently there are certain things an establishment has to have to be classed as a restaurant and be eligible for a license. Sheetz, a Pennsylvania chain gas and convenience store lost their case, in spite of building a store that includes “a 60-seat restaurant with 4,000 sq. ft. of floor space.” In this article I just linked, Lew Bryson also brings up the following point:
People — legislators and judges — seem to have this bizarre idea that if beer is sold in gasoline stations, where people drive in to get gas in their cars, they will automatically drive away sucking on a cold longneck. As opposed to driving to a restaurant or bar, where they will suck on the cold longneck before they drive away? If a supermarket has a license to sell beer, how is that different from a tavern or deli with the same kind of license to sell beer?
Meh? Well, Sheetz lost, but then Wegmans, a New York grocery store chain based out of Rochester, came along to challenge the law again. Wegmans won and was awarded several liquor licenses in Pennsylvania. A lovely quote from this article from Wegmans’ lawyer R.J. O’Hara carefully explains “‘What Wegmans offers is a restaurant that happens to be based in a grocery store. By no means is it a grocery store selling beer.” Oh, I see.
Laughing yet? The article goes on to explain what else the lawyer says:
He said the company had to make changes to qualify for the licenses, including narrowing the passageway that connects the store with the cafe. O’Hara said customers will have to pay for their beer inside the cafe, not at normal checkout lanes with other grocery items.
They sure did. I visited the new Collegeville Wegmans yesterday and they have a store employee at this narrower passageway guarding it so people don’t bring beer they haven’t paid for into the rest of the grocery store. So I did my grocery shopping, then snagged a couple of beers and paid for them in the cafe, showed the guard I had paid for them (they put stickers on!), then walked across the store to pay for the rest of my groceries at the grocery store checkout.
Now Wegmans is a nice, upscale store and the opening of this store on Sunday in this area was big news and the place was quite crowded. While walking through the beer section there was a lot of anecdotal evidence from my visit that people were thrilled by this available six-packs and singles, and questions about “how they were allowed to do this” were answered by Wegmans staff non-stop – I must have heard them answer it a dozen times (ok, so I did spend about 20 minutes gawking at the beers myself trying to pick what I wanted!). But don’t trust my anecdotal evidence, MSNBC seems to have done real research:
Pennsylvania voters have said in polls that they want to see the end of the case law. The state’s small brewers are all for it; it makes their more expensive beers easier to sample. Even Mothers Against Drunk Driving is in favor of the change, because it lets people buy beer in smaller quantities.
Practically, for most beer-drinking members of the electorate, these laws make no sense. People want to buy singles and six packs, and they don’t want to have to do it by taking out from a bar or restaurant – not only is this unwieldy, there is frequently a premium price stuck on these, hop over to the border to NJ or DE and you can buy all of this beer for cheaper (and let me tell you, there are plenty of stores on the border, even though the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board likes to deny that people cross the border for alcohol purchases). Others who look into this issue tend to cite people profiting off the crazy laws as those who are responsible for the laws staying on the books.
I am hopeful that Wegmans is a good first step in getting the government in Pennsylvania to realize that people want these things – and to show people that they can have it, and fight for it. But until then? I was able to pick up the lambic pictured above for $5.99 – I think this is the cheapest I’ve ever seen it sold for in Pennsylvania. I really hope Wegmans continues to sell their beer for reasonable prices because I like beer, I like really good beer and I don’t like buying cases. I’m just one person! I never want that much beer! Even a six-pack is pushing it, I tend to buy singles, and Wegmans is where I’ll be buying these singles.
