Friday, March 18, 2016

Friday Night 7PM

What serves you better?

This Pennsylvania state store?


Or this grocery store in Texas?


How about this grocery store in Wisconsin?


Perhaps this one in Iowa!


This grocery in Springfield, Mo. is kinda nice too, and like the others, it's open Friday evenings!.

And somehow they get along with no separate entrances, no separate checkouts, and no government employees. This is NORMAL to most people. To be fair, the PLCB does have some liquor stores inside grocery stores (staffed by them, run by them). After over 30 years of trying to get the program accepted, there are fewer than 20 in the whole state, and they call that a success. Grocery stores know that having liquor and wine and beer sales is good for the bottom line. They also know that having a state store inside, that doesn't pay them as much rent as they make selling other things in the same space, isn't.

Maybe ANY local liquor store that would be open in a private system would work. Remember, the PLCB goal is to be better than Utah, not the other 48 states.

The PLCB will always fail the consumer compared to private business.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Question, why are there so few one-stop shops? The ones that exist seem to be very popular but it's pathetic how few of them exist. Did the PLCB officially give up on opening new ones after a certain point? It's been about ten years since they last opened one. All of them opened in the 2003-2006 period when Jonathan Newman was in charge and the PLCB was doing major upgrades to its store fleet. The PLCB boasts that a lot of the new (since 2010) FWAGS stores are "conveniently co-located" with supermarkets, but none have been one-stop shops. One one-stop shop was rebranded to the FWAGS concept though. A lot of one-stop shops have had to deal with their host supermarkets closing. Often the one-stop shops are able to create their own entrances/exits to the outside when this happens, but the concept of one-stop shopping is ruined unless another supermarket opens in the space. The one-stop shops all seem to be fairly close to a "normal" state store though. In fact, one particular one-stop shop anchors the same shopping center as a standalone state store. Do we know the explanation for that one? In all fairness though, the two stores are kind of hidden from one another. I guess that counts for something, eh?

Lew Bryson said...

You just can't let this go, can you?

Lew Bryson said...

BTW, they "seem to be very popular" for the same reason people shop at the other State Stores: there is no other choice.

Albert Brooks said...

I've mentioned why there are so few "one stop shops" a few times including in this story. What don't you understand about the grocery stores not wanting to give up sales space to an outside entity that disrupts their hours, sales, workforce and product availability without significantly contributing to their bottom line?