We wish all Red White & Food members Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
Thanks for all your support since we launched our campaign in March. We have so much for which to be thankful and so much to look forward to next year.
A toast to success,
The Red White & Food Team
Liquor stores claim they are the only businesses that can sell wine safely because only people who are 21 and over have any reason for being in their stores.
The second half of this statement is true; by law, they can only sell wine and liquor. They have accepted limitations on their business in return for the monopoly status they have over the market.
The first half of the statement is just self-serving. Let’s look at the conditions necessary to sell wine safely:
Retail food stores already accomplish #1 and #3. Retail food stores have sold beer and pharmaceuticals (both controlled products) for many years. They also follow the Responsible Vendor Act, which requires proof of age for anyone who reasonably looks younger than 50. Ironically, liquor stores aren’t required by law to check proof of age.
The retail food industry would follow all rules for licensing and education (#2) required by the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission if its stores are allowed to sell wine. Under the Responsible Vendor Act, retail food stores can already volunteer to become “responsible vendors” by requiring clerks to complete the ABC’s server training course.
Liquor stores have a monopoly on the wine market. That doesn’t mean they have a monopoly on safe sales.
Liquor store owners have rolled out a new key message.
Key messages are talking points or headlines you want people to remember and repeat (though not like this).
The store owners’ new key message is that no state since Iowa in 1985 approved wine sales in retail food stores.
Just like a good wine, some ideas take more time to age.
We realize that liquor stores haven’t changed much (by much we mean any) since Prohibition ended 75 years ago. And, liquor stores have made it clear that they don’t want to change.
Thankfully, Tennessee and Tennesseans have made quite a bit of progress since 1933 and even since 1985.
It doesn’t matter which was the last state to make the change or how long ago it happened.
What does matter is that Tennessee consumers want and will benefit from this change. Liquor stores owners still haven’t proven otherwise.
Tennessee is a red state. The last election proved that.
The liquor retailers who testified at the Nov. 17 ABC subcommittee hearing repeatedly referred to the proposal to sell wine in retail food stores as a “liberalization of Tennessee liquor laws.”
Did we miss something? When did a more open market that gives consumers more choices become a liberal ideal?
A liberalization of the laws would be lowering the drinking age, which no one in the retail food store industry is advocating. In fact, the industry pushed for the Responsible Vendor Act and its mandatory carding provision that is the biggest deterrent to underage people trying to buy beer. The same standards would apply to wine sales. No other state has laws as strict as Tennessee. Tennessee liquor stores don’t even follow a similar standard.
Red, White & Food is not a political platform. It is a consumer platform. Our members, who number in the thousands, want the option of picking up a bottle of wine they like where the buy food.
Consumer choice is not red, blue, or purple. It’s black and white.
