World Class? The PLCB doesn't even carry the top selling liquor in the world.

Edit: It turns out that the PLCB does carry one brand under the ByeJoe brand name as an SLO (qty 6) and it is listed as "DISTILLED SPIRITS - OTHER (IMPORT)" rather than Baijiu which is the same as listing Jim Beam as Corn Whiskey and not Bourbon. The point of the blog remains true.
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When you are the arbiter of everything liquor you have to be extraordinarily aggressive at supplying the wants and desires of ALL the population. If you're the only source, after all, they have no other recourse, so you need to go out there and get the products the public wants and not what you feel like supplying!

Or you can just be extraordinarily passive and only do the minimum because you don't have to put forth the extra effort. You don't want to keep track of all those things because you have a hard enough time with what you do carry.

We live under the latter here in PA. Case in point. The PLCB doesn't carry the largest-selling liquor in the world.  Nowhere in the entire state: not on the shelf, not SLO, not on the crappy website. If you visit other states, does every private liquor store carry it? Certainly not, but then, they don't have to fill the wants of an entire state, either. Do other states carry this item that the PLCB has deemed not worthy to offer the citizens? You better believe it. I found it in New England, the mid-Atlantic, the South, and the West without too much trouble; in private stores, I might add. The control states like Pennsylvania fared pretty poorly.

You may be wondering how the PLCB can claim to be "world class" in their selection (which they claim often) when they don't have the wold's biggest-selling category of spirits. Simple: they aren't, since there are hundreds of stores in the country that carry more products on the shelf than any state store. The PLCB fudges their numbers claim by counting items you can order from private distributors....just like anyone in the real world of retail can do too. The fact is that the PLCB's on-the-shelf selection is beaten soundly by many stores all over America including many in other control states.

Have you figured it out yet? You may have: the mystery product is Baijiu, the largest-selling liquor in the world not only by volume, but value too. It's acknowledged as the national drink of China. There are seven times as many ethnic Chinese in Pennsylvania as there are ethnic Japanese, but you'd never know that looking at the shelves of the state stores. Perhaps Chinese restaurants, of which there seem to be quite a few around, might want to serve traditional liquor with their meals...just not in Pennsylvania where they have no selection, no choice, no freedom, and no voice in changing things.

Sorry, you'll have to go to Jersey. Again.

Lack of selection and market knowledge is one of the many prices that Pennsylvanians pay for by keeping the PLCB. Another is agility or the ability to spot trends and market forces and react to them. When you are a government agency more interested in how many more years you have to hang on until retirement, keeping up with or leading your competition doesn't enter the picture. You have no competition and don't care if you keep up with the private sector, because your citizen prisoners can only buy what you decide to let them buy anyway.

You'll get what we allow you to get when and if we allow you to get it.

The time has come to rid ourselves of this third-world class mistake and let the free market satisfy the wants and needs of the consumer, like they do for almost everything else you buy.