Beer and wine store owners are concerned that the British Columbia government is considering letting residents buy beer and wine in grocery stores.
“It would impact our business dramatically,” said Liberty Wine Merchants president Robert Simpson, who owns six wine stores and employs more than 60 people.
He remains skeptical that the B.C. government will go as far as to allow corner stores to sell beer and wine even though John Yap, who is parliamentary secretary for liquor policy reform, hinted as much on October 29.
“I’ve heard strong support for liquor sales in grocery stores and the added convenience it would afford B.C. families,” Yap said.
Yap noted that 80% of the responses that he has received so far in his liquor policy consultations are in favour of the public being able to buy beer and wine along with groceries.
Simpson believes letting corner grocers sell beer and wine would be a “radical” shift in policy that would run smack dab into the province’s strong temperance movement.
“We bump our heads into that temperance movement whenever we try to relocate one of our wine stores,” Simpson told Business in Vancouver.
“I’m also somewhat skeptical that [corner stores selling alcohol] will happen because it will mean that we’d be closing government liquor stores. It would be difficult to maintain a government store the size of the one at [West] 39th Avenue and Cambie Street selling only spirits.”
Yap did not discuss the possibility of hard alcohol being sold in corner stores, as is the case in California.
Instead, he brought up a few Canadian models that B.C. will consider, which are:
- Quebec allowing grocery stores to sell domestic and imported beer as well as Quebec-bottled wine;
- Nova Scotia allowing government liquor stores within grocery stores; and
- Ontario allowing Ontario wineries to sell their wine in either freestanding stores or stores within grocery stores.
Yap has been consulting industry insiders and the public for ideas for how to modernize B.C. liquor laws for the past 84 days. He will wrap up his review at midnight on October 31 and then write a report for Justice Minister Suzanne Anton by November 25.
The public can leave comments on the B.C. liquor policy review website until the review is completed October 31.
