Life will get a little bit easier for Colorado’s last-minute party
planners and “Sunday Funday” habitués this weekend, as the 75-year-old
ban on Sunday liquor sales is lifted.
But not everyone is happy about the repeal.
And, no, it is not teetotaling temperance activists who are upset. It’s
some liquor store operators, who are unsure whether giving up their one
day off will translate into bigger profits. And some of whom believe
this repeal is a subversive move toward putting full-strength beer,
wine and liquor in convenience stores and supermarkets — where
currently only beer with 3.2 percent alcohol is sold. (This low-alcohol
brew is a relic of the days before Colorado’s drinking age was raised
to 21, in 1987, when 18-year-olds were permitted to buy only the 3.2
beer).
“I am not enthused about it,” said Chris Cook, manager of El
Jebeverage. “I think it is a stepping stone to getting liquor sales in
grocery stores.”
Supermarket operators are also peeved, claiming that opening liquor
stores on Sundays only further slants the marketing playing field
against them. Specifically, they say they sell most of their 3.2 suds
on Sundays, when consumers have never previously been permitted to
purchase full-strength beer over-the-counter anywhere in Colorado.
With that ban now repealed, grocers fear those sorta-beer sales will drop even further.
“Why should these retailers be forced to compete on the market using a
product that consumers may choose to avoid?” asked Sean Duffy of the
Rocky Mountain Food Industry Association, a group that lobbies on
behalf of grocery stores, including the Roaring Fork Valley’s City
Markets. “What we’re puzzled about is the legislators choosing the
winners and the losers, rather than letting the consumers do that.”
Duffy added that in other states, like California, liquor stores have
survived despite beer, wine and liquor being added to grocery shelves.
(And that, due to a bizarre quirk in Colorado law, chain stores here
can designate one of their locations to sell hard liquor, wine and
full-strength beer. Meaning that, somewhere here in the Centennial
State, you may be able to toss a bottle of Jägermeister into your
Kroger shopping cart, though no such grocery chain exists in the
Roaring Fork Valley.)
The Colorado measure, signed by Gov. Bill Ritter in April, is the 35th
U.S. state law to allow Sunday liquor sales, and the 13th to do so
since just 2002. The rapid rush of repeals can be attributed to an
all-but-dead abstinence movement that held strong in the 1930s, when
Prohibition was first repealed.
It can also be chalked up to states trying to increase their sales tax
revenue. New York state, for example, saw their revenue jump 7 percent,
or $26.7 million, in the year after Gov. George Pataki repealed their
blue law ban.
All the local liquor store operators interviewed for this article said
they would open on Sunday, though most with limited hours of operation.
All have also added — or said they plan to add — more clerks to cover the increased hours of operation.
“It’s definitely better for the visitors here,” said Kyle Kroupa, a
clerk at the Wine Cellar in Carl’s Pharmacy. “It just means we’ll have
to adjust.”
But many expressed some trepidation as to whether the extra day, extra
hours and overhead costs would translate into extra profits.
“I think for right now the six-day business will just spread out over seven days,” said Cook of El Jebeverage.
andrew@aspendailynews.com
