Following last year’s defeat of liquor privatization Initiative 1100, Costco is returning with another initiative to boot the state out of the booze-selling business. And this time, the retail giant has seemingly learned from its mistakes: Costco’s new proposal would generate revenue for the state and throw public safety advocates a bone by limiting store sizes to prevent convenience store booze sales, among other public safety measures.
The initiative is closely modeled after a bill proposed by Costco (that summarily died a quick death) during the regular legislative session. But specifically, the new initiative would:
—Require liquor stores to have at least 10,000 square feet of retail space. This eliminates the possibility of convenience-store liquor sales, and presumably helps limits access to minors.
—Mandate that licensed booze retailers pay 17 percent of their gross spirits revenues to the state. And while this initiative allows retailers to deal directly with wineries and distilleries, it doesn’t cut distributors out of the picture completely (as beer distributors feared and fought against last year). Instead, the initiative mandates that licensed distributors pay 10 percent of their gross spirits revenues to the state during the first two years of operation and five percent of their gross revenues to the state after that period.
—It also upends current law to allow wineries and wine distributors to give volume discounts to retail stores and restaurants.
—On a public safety level, the initiative seeks to “make the standard fines and license suspension penalties for selling liquor to minors twice as strong as the existing fines and penalties for selling beer or wine to minors.”
The initiative is awaiting a ballot title from the Attorney General, after which it can be challenged in court for a week before the fun begins: signature gathering. Initiative backers will be toiling under a tight deadline—they need to gather 241,153 valid signatures by July 8 in order to qualify for the November 8 ballot.
More to come, I’m sure.
I demand to know Goldy’s take on this.
Oh for chrissakes. The social engineering never stops. Now even the big stores are in on the act.
A restriction of 10,000 square feet is COMPLETELY INSANE. Most good wine shops — the kind you want to emulate here — are not anywhere near 10,000. There’s no reason on earth for a liquor store to be limited to this size and above. And if you think Costco is going to have 10,000 square feet of liquor display, you’re wrong.
This is a lowest-common-denominator solution which will dramatically REDUCE the availability of good booze in this state. Instead you’ll get Costco and QFC with the ten biggest-selling brands on sale. WORSE THAN WHAT WE HAVE NOW.
Will there be ANY neighborhood streetside retail left in this state in ten years?
This, I would support. The only reason I voted against them last time was because it would have killed the state’s money machine. Glad this one includes a way for the state to continue to make money.
What FNARF said.
I have a hangover, and this Slog post made me queasy. Also, I agree with Fnarf. You would have to be completely corrupt to even consider a square footage minimum in a law regulating sales of any product.
Number two says exactly what I came to say.
Also, the notion that small stores somehow increase access to alcohol for minors is laughable.
Who do you think is going to care more about the 2k fine for selling to a minor, a small convince store or a huge warehouse store?
Yeah, I’m with Fnarf. Personally, I’d be happy if the state kept running hard liquor stores, but began running them with an eye to increasing revenue, perhaps by opening more stores, keeping later hours, or being open on Sundays.
I might vote for this if 10K sqft was the maximum size of a liquor seller’s store. Minimum? Not a chance.
They got the signatures for the last one in a couple of days with Costco and Safeway paying employees to collect signatures out in front of their stores.
@1 Goldy’s take will probably boil down to “WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?!?” or something smug.
@7 Huge warehouse store. Their employees have no profit motive in selling minors and would most likely get fired if caught.
Fnarf isnt always right. Maybe most of the time he is correct. He is 1000% right on this, just like the waterfront boulevard.
I want it privatized but this is a shitty solution that will only benefit Costco.
I’m not voting for a liquor privatization initiative until liquor licenses are only available to stores beginning with “C” and ending in “stco”. Also property taxes should be exempt for Costco Platinum level cardholders.
This is libertarian free market crap. The state needs to keep control of liquor sales, with maybe some more stores and hours, but only idiots need 24 hour access to booze. Plan the hell ahead.
My 2 story 4bedroom is ~2,200 sq ft. 10k must be huge.
Maybe a bill should be drafted at a SLOG Happy hour.
Hmm… I would agree w/ the 10000 sq ft minimum for any seller that gets less than 70-90% revenue from alcohol. That would keep out convenience stores, restaurants and most bar & grills from doing off-sale. And maybe just beer and wine in major grocery stores (Albertson’s? Safeway? Rosauer’s? What’s still out there, it’s been awhile for me).
Costco can do their warehouse thang, and smaller liquor stores could better cater to their neighborhood customers. I wonder what the middle of that Venn diagram would look like, people-wise.
This is hypothetical for me, because I haven’t lived in WA for decades, but hell. The only off-sale we have available in MN on Sunday is 3.2% beer from a convenience store, or drive to Wisconsin. So mostly we plan ahead.
*cough* Christopher *cough*
Maybe it’s the incredibly sappy Oprah farewell extravaganza that I am, in the name of relationship harmony, being forced to watch that is making me cross. But I just don’t get why this is such an issue.
Privatize the stores, let anyone with – I don’t know, $250k? – buy a license to sell booze. Let local zoning decide where a store can be. Let the cops worry about illegal sales.
And tax it. Tax the he’ll out of it. Tax it until the cows come home. Tax it until the fat lady sings.
Every argument against privatization, other than the fiscal impact on tne state’s coffers, is nonsense. The right-wing pear clutchers and the Seattle Big Thinkers are both wrong on this one.
The state should not be in the business of selling liquor, just as the state should not be in the business of telling bars what sort of legal entertainment they can provide to their exclusively over 21 clientele.
What Fnarf and the other critics said. This is epically stupid.
Rarely, indeed almost never, do I get to look at my home state of California and think “nyah-nyah, suckers.” But oh man, is this ever one of those times. We do a lot of things stupidly here, but if I need to I can buy a goddamn bottle of wine or vodka from my local corner store at 10pm on a Sunday, and somehow the apocalypse has failed to occur as a result.
Fucking Costco douchebags. Way to screw up another initiative. I’m all for privatizing liquor sales, but the 10,000 sq ft minimum is a deal-killer for me. Most of our CURRENT state liquor stores aren’t even that big. A lot of grocery stores are smaller than that. A 10,000 sq ft minimum would give Costco a de-facto near monopoly on liquor sales.
I don’t think so.
“Be careful what you wish….Wishes often come true..”
I disagree, guys. I like breaking up monopolies, and I want to buy booze at 11pm. But I voted no on 1100 because I live a block from a very troubled gas station/mini mart, where we’ve got plenty of problems without the hard liqs. This is a good compromise.
I forgot to say: Sing along with me, “Be careful what you wish…etc.”
Can we stop dicking around with fees and regulated businesses and pass an asset tax on intangibles?
Even the PI is getting on the bandwagon as in this story that appeared on their home page yesterday:
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/S…
I think we should tax your mom.
Also 10,000 sf requires a store to set up where real estate is cheap, far away from easy access by public transit. Stupid as hell.
Why is it so difficult to implement the same rules that California has? Simply allow for local zoning ordinances. That way, some place in eastern Washington that only wants WalMart liquor can get it, but residents of Seattle can have 7-11 liquor if they want it. What’s so difficult about that? Costco deals with those rules in California now. One would think that they would know the laws there and could write the same for Washington’s initiative. If they can’t figure that out I’m not sure they’re smart enough to sell liquor.
Jeebus — I’m jumping on the Fnarf bandwagon. I’m not a Costco hater, but this is going to seriously screw not only the small wine/beer retailers who want into the game, but more importantly, the micro-distilling industry which is still in its infancy. It’s taken years to get to where we’re at and frankly, for all of the good things Costco has done for consumers and even its own employees, it’s notorious for kicking the living shite out of suppliers. This is almost guaranteed to kill off most of the smaller distillers right off the bat. The current state store system sucks, but at least they’re mandated to carry everything (it’s true).
Yes, let’s let the Washington State continue the fine job selling liquor. Here is the number one highlight from the Washington State Liquor Control Board 2010 Annual Report. http://liq.wa.gov/about/annual-report
“FY 2010 Highlights
Additional information regarding the below highlights can be found throughout the report.
• Safe and Responsible Sales. State stores continued to rank among the nation’s highest for their 95 percent no-sales-to-minors compliance rate.”
If the States happy 5% sales to minors, I say keep this system in place. It’s working great!
The distributor clause is BS too. There is only a small handful a very large distributors like K&L and Columbia. They have been in business for years. Do they pay the increased initiation fee? Or does it only apply to the small time upstart distributors whom are marketing smaller breweries? How can anyone even start to compete?
Costco has 10,000 sq ft of hard alcohol retail space, in Maui. Nothing like a magna bottle of Makers Mark at $40 to get one through the day (yes, they really exist.)
There are two issues that are apparent. #1, alcohol should be available and more accessible; better hours, more locations. #2, alcohol should be cheaper; buy in bulk to resale, reduce sin taxes. Every initiative seems to roll everything up in a ball. Nothing will ever pass if they are not addressed separately.
Women voters will still kill this bill.
Been fun listening to you blather, but you still just don’t get WHO votes on this stuff and WHY.
In 2009, there were a few problems with the initiatives. One was the revenue to the State, which this seems to address.
Two was proliferation of liquor stores, which this attempts to address, but poorly. As Fnarf, in his infinite wisdom, points out, specialty liquor stores would be prohibited under this scheme, and that’s just stupid.
Additionally, smaller grocers that probably should be able to carry liquor (Pete’s in Eastlake, some Trader Joe’s locations, the Red Apple on Madison) would be banned for being under 10k square feet. Perfect being the enemy of the good is one thing, but that is a clear attempt to block neighborhood grocers from being able to carry booze.
Finally, jobs. As we are seeing month after month, the sector that is losing jobs is the public sector, and firing these employees, over 1,000, during a recession seems like a bad idea.
No they’re not. There are many kinds of liquor (not even all that rare or unpopular) that you cannot buy in all of Washington state.
@33: “There are many kinds of liquor (not even all that rare or unpopular) that you cannot buy in all of Washington state.”
Like what?
Rather than a flat square footage limit, there should be a base license cost with a schedule of modifiers for things like store size and portion of store display area devoted to liquor (e.g. if you’re devoting your entire store to liquor sales, you’ll pay more for a license than a convenience store that has 1 or 2 shelves behind the register). Costco is just shooting themselves in the foot with that ridiculous limitation. It’s almost like they don’t actually want to get into the liquor business in WA.
@35: “Costco is just shooting themselves in the foot with that ridiculous limitation. It’s almost like they don’t actually want to get into the liquor business in WA.”
They can ride this out, though, wait for people to break down and stop caring about the details. The tunnel proponents/astroturfers are hoping for the same.
@33: That’s not entirely true. I thought that was the case as well, but a friend of mine who is also an aspiring micro-distiller filled me in: the state stores are required under the statute to special order anything (legal), even if it is “off-schedule”. The consumer may have to buy a certain quantity — like a half- or full case, but they must attempt to order it for you. Now that doesn’t mean that it’s going to be cheap, so maybe a completely open market would work better, but if you think that’s what you’d get with the Costco-supported legislation, I have a deep-bore tunnel to sell you….
I agree with Fnarf
@37: “That’s not entirely true. I thought that was the case as well, but a friend of mine who is also an aspiring micro-distiller filled me in: the state stores are required under the statute to special order anything (legal), even if it is “off-schedule”. The consumer may have to buy a certain quantity — like a half- or full case, but they must attempt to order it for you.”
Thanks for the perspective, obviously there’s the “approved” list, his argument sounded specious at best.
@39,
No, my argument is not remotely specious. There are many types of liquor that are not stocked in even ONE liquor store in this entire state. (They have an online database; look it up.) The special order requirement is a fucking joke, and #28 is still a bloody liar. They are not mandated to CARRY jack shit.
@37,
You said “carry.” Carry = stocked, not special order an entire fucking case at great expense and with a long-ass wait.