Sunday liquor sales might cheer consumers, but some retailers say the extra day has uncorked profits as flat as day-old beer.
Last year, the state repealed a ban on Sunday sales of hooch, allowing liquor stores to open seven days a week for the first time since Prohibition.
Sunday sales haven’t added much fizz to business at Daveco Liquors in Thornton, said owner Henry Sawaged.
Most customers who come to Daveco on Sunday would have shown up on another day of the week before the law went into effect July 1, Sawaged said. Other liquor store managers agree.
“I think to a certain degree it has taken away from Saturday, and also Monday, because people would get it on Saturday or wait until Monday. They are not as apt to run out and replenish on Monday like they did in the old days,” said Randy Raymer, general manager of Mayfair Liquors in southeast Denver.
The cost of keeping Daveco — declared world’s largest liquor store by the Guinness Book of World Records — open an extra day wipes out any profit the Sunday sales generate, Sawaged said.
“We have 10 to 12 people working. Of course you couldn’t open without a manager in charge, so they get more, plus our utilities,” Sawaged said.
Business at Mayfair Liquors improved as much as 15 percent throughout the whole of 2008, Raymer said. It is hard to say how much of that jump came on Sundays, he said.
But he said he thinks the additional day of sales gives a small jolt to the bottom line: “It has increased business, but it hasn’t increased it dramatically.”
Among the 500 liquor stores that belong to the Colorado Licensed Beverage Association, the consensus is that Sunday sales have been disappointing, said Jeanne McEvoy, the trade group’s executive director.
“It hasn’t been the boon that we would like it to have been, but the bottom line is, it is what the customer wants,” she said.
There are some stores, both large and small, that have reported a jump in business that owners think is attributable to Sunday sales, she added.
Across the state, July sales soared 30 percent over the same month in the previous year, followed by a similar increase in August, according to the state Department of Revenue. In September, however, the tax yield dived 9.4 percent. The agency doesn’t keep track of sales on particular days of the week.
Excise taxes gathered from liquor, wine and beer sales gained 2.7 percent in October from the same period in 2007.
“There was a big attraction for the first couple of months because it was brand new,” McEvoy said. “Then we settled back to a little bit of normalcy.”
The recession clouds interpretation of the numbers. Even if people are shopping more with Sunday in the mix, they are pinching pennies and buying lower-priced alcoholic beverages, McEvoy said.
“I think the economy has impacted our business 6 to 10 percent because members are saying even with Sunday sales, the potential increases aren’t what they expected,” she said.
It will take a year of sales data to get an accurate fix on the effect that staying open has had, McEvoy added.
Sales decline for 3.2 beer
One thing seems clear — the sale of beer that is 3.2 percent alcohol decreased, while full-strength beer sales gained during the period. Between July and October, sales of 3.2 beer sank 19 percent, according to the Department of Revenue.
Grocery and convenience stores that can carry only 3.2 beer blame the new law for the decline. After losing a battle for legislative approval to sell full-strength brews last year, they are taking up the cause again in this year’s legislative session.
“Most of the 3.2 sales at the stores were on Sunday. Why? Because the liquor stores were closed,” said Sean Duffy, spokesman for the Rocky Mountain Food Industry Association, whose members are mostly grocery and convenience stores.
“Consumers are voting with their feet,” he said, adding that 3.2 beer “is a Prohibition-era product that our guys particularly are saddled with and can’t compete.”
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com
