Remember 3.2 beer? From the end of Prohibition until recently thatap all you could buy at the grocery stores or anywhere on Sundays when liquor stores were closed.
After the Colorado legislature repealed the Sunday closure law in 2008, the days of weak beer were numbered. Before the ink of the governor’s signature could dry, grocery stores and big-box chains were clamoring to sell full-strength beer. Thanks to laws passed in 2016 and 2018, these businesses can sell real beer and up to five stores per food chain in the state can sell wine and hard alcohol.
Continuing to chip away at retail restrictions, Gov. Jared Polis signed two more laws last year. One allows restaurants to offer take-out and delivery of alcoholic beverages for the next four years. The other enables more Colorado craft wineries, distilleries, and cideries to obtain a pub license so they can sell food and alcohol in addition to their own products.
Thanks to these laws, customers can legally buy adult beverages at a variety of locations.
While 3.2 beer is a memory, and not a particularly good one, most grocery stores are still restricted to selling only the fizzy nonalcoholic grape juice you serve guests at the kiddie table on Thanksgiving. Thankfully, voters are likely to see a ballot initiative this November ending the restriction on wine sales at supermarkets. This vestige of Prohibition will be history.
Liquor stores, which for decades enjoyed a state-created near-monopoly on the sale of wine and beer, are worried that such a change to state law would spell an end to their businesses. Their fears are not unfounded. After the 2018 law allowing full-strength beer sales at supermarkets went into effect, some liquor stores reported losing 30% or more of their revenue. The loss of a wine sales monopoly could doom some to closure.
Liquor stores in neighborhoods without a grocery store won’t be as affected. Liquor stores in closer proximity to grocery stores will have to make it worth customers’ while to pay a visit by offering a superb selection or unique finds, lower prices, or services such as wine tastings. Now is the time to prepare because this time next year, buying wine at the grocery store will seem as normal as buying beef, bread, a custom cake, or prescription pills.
In the not-so-distant past, it was not normal to buy any of these things at the grocery store. A shopper would need to visit a butcher, a baker, a pastry shop, and a pharmacy to fill this list. Roughly a century ago, the first supermarkets opened and over time these products began to appear under one roof. Today, the independent specialty food shops that coexist with these giants do so because they offer unique products and services. They make a special trip worthwhile.
The rise of internet sales has been no less revolutionary than the rise of the supermarket and the big box store in the last century. A shopper can buy and have delivered just about anything. E-commerce accounted for 13.2% of all sales last year according to government data. The impact on brick-and-mortar shops has been considerable.
The strip mall near my childhood home had a record shop, a Radio Shack, a Hallmark store, and a Blockbuster Video. Had there been a bookstore, it, too, would be long gone. The big mall where I had my first high school job looks like it might not make another decade.
The farmers market that meets in the parking lot on summer Saturdays, however, wasn’t there when I was young. It flourishes, proving the point that if you offer a great in-person buying experience, people will come.
Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.
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