I live in a province that operates the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO). You either buy your booze from them or you don't buy booze at all.
The Ontario Convenience Stores Association presented the government with a petition of 112,500 names gathered at more than 220 locations across the province earlier this year but Premier Dalton McGuinty's response was firm -- "No booze for you!"
I understand why corner stores would want into the business of selling liquor. Every year sales at the LCBO increase. Net income last year was $1.56 billion, an 8.8 per cent increase over the previous year. If you've ever been to the liquor store on a summer weekend the place is abuzz with customers. Who wouldn't want a piece of that action?
I sympathize with convenience store owners because I remember the days when those businesses dominated the Ontario landscape. Those were the days when pop (soda to my American friends) was sold in bottles and those bottles had to be returned for a refund, milk was sold in jugs that also had to be returned for a refund and you could buy most grocery or drug store items you needed. Big box stores were no threat because they didn't exist.
When cola manufacturers figured out they could make more money putting their products in plastic bottles that was the beginning of the end for many convenience stores. Soon nobody needed to return their bottles for refund because we could just toss them in those new things coined blue boxes. Same went for milk. Plastic took over the world and soon grocery stores began to expand and carry everything. All of a sudden the Becker's and Checker's variety stores began to close. I had a first-hand view of the carnage as I worked as a bottle boy at my local Becker's Store earning $2 an hour. That was a fortune to a kid in the early 80s.
These days I bet there aren't half as many people who use variety stores as there were in the late 70s, early 80s. There's a small store around the corner from my house I take the kids to for slushies on hot, summer days. It's never crowded but you could still purchase a lot of grocery items there if you wanted to. I don't think a lot of people do given the dust on most of the canned products on the shelves.
The addition of stalking wine, beer and liquor on the shelves would open up customer traffic in these stores and you'd probably see a lot more of them open up across the province. It's okay to sell lottery tickets and cigarettes in convenience stores, what more could it hurt if customers could buy wine or beer there as well?
It's a political issue I know and involves more than sympathy for the little guy running his small family business. But it would definitely affirm the 'convenience' aspect of these stores when it comes to shopping.
