The grocery and convenience store lobby is making one last effort to push for the ability to sell full-strength beer.
We think they ought to have the right to sell stronger suds. But we don’t think their effort should gum up legislation that already has passed enabling Sunday sales at liquor stores.
The core issue here is parity, but it’s wrapped up in a web of complicated Colorado liquor laws.
As it stands, there are no liquor sales allowed on Sunday in Colorado except for lower-alcohol beer at grocery and convenience stores.
But the legislature, in a progressive move, recently approved a bill allowing Sunday sales at liquor stores. That bill is awaiting the governor’s signature.
However, grocery and convenience store owners believe that if liquor stores sell on Sunday, they’re going to lose out on money they make from selling lower-alcohol, 3.2 percent beer on Sundays.
Their concerns are understandable. Unless consumers are specifically looking for a “light” beer on Sunday, they’d probably bypass a grocery store and head for a liquor store, where they could get the real deal.
There are, however, a few other issues to keep in mind.
First, the Sunday sales bill was a long time coming. There was a knock-down, drag-out fight over a similar bill in 2005, with the primary opponents being liquor store owners who said the measure would increase their overhead without boosting overall sales.
But this session, it seems that legislators and liquor store owners took to heart the overwhelming consumer sentiment to repeal arcane blue laws and let people buy alcohol on Sundays. We weren’t the only ones who cheered.
As convenience and grocery stores lobbied to get in on the action and sell full-strength liquor, other concerns arose. In a historic and convoluted effort to level the playing field, liquor stores have been prohibited from selling food.
If you find this tangle of laws bizarre, you are not alone.
In short, we believe the food-sale prohibition for liquor stores would have to go if grocery and convenience stores got the right to sell full-strength beer.
And we think this negotiation should be separate from the measure that has already passed allowing Sunday sales at liquor stores.
If the grocery and convenience store lobby wants to find someone in the legislature to run a late bill, go for it. If that doesn’t work, there’s always next session.
But it would be foolish to allow the hard-fought Sunday sales bill to get delayed in the mix.
We hope to see Gov. Bill Ritter sign the bill so Colorado consumers will no longer be encumbered by a prohibition so out of step with modern times.
