Liquor sales on Sundays, and in grocery stores? NC lawmakers debate reforms

A proposed series of reforms to North Carolina’s liquor laws is dividing two key camps of the Republican Party that controls the state legislature — business interests and conservative Christian groups.

A state House of Representatives committee brought up House Bill 921 for debate Tuesday, and committee members heard plenty of debate from members of the public who attended.

There’s also a separate push from some in the business industry to fully privatize the state’s liquor system, WRAL reported last week. But that provision isn’t part of this bill, and lawmakers were clear in Tuesday’s meeting that they have no intention of suggesting the state go that far, at least not as part of this year’s legislation.

Among other provisions, the bill would:

• Give ABC stores the option to open on most Sundays, except for Easter and other holidays.
• Allow people to order two cocktails at once at a bar, a practice allowed by many bartenders for convenience but technically against the law.
• Allow grocery stores to sell canned cocktails, although all other liquor sales would still be confined to ABC stores.
• Lift some regulations on “mobile bar services” such as those people hire for weddings or other large events.
• Allow bars, restaurants, hotels and others to purchase their liquor from any ABC store in the state, not just those in their same county.

The item with the most focus Tuesday, from supporters as well as opponents, is the idea to let grocery stores, gas stations and similar retailers start selling pre-mixed cocktails.

In addition to beer and wine, those stores can already sell drinks like hard seltzers or spiked lemonade — which aren’t made from liquor, but are rather malt beverages. A change to also allow canned cocktails would open up markets for big, national brands such as High Noon, Cutwater and others.

Alcohol industry insiders say the shift toward those types of drinks is an emerging new trend and should be encouraged. The Retail Merchants Association of North Carolina, which lobbies on behalf of grocery stores and other retailers, is pushing hard for its members to be allowed to sell them.

“What this bill does is, especially around the pre-mixed cocktails, is it meets consumers where they are,” the group’s president, Andy Ellen, said Tuesday. “It meets your consumers where they want to be — where they want to shop, day in and day out.”

But the idea has strong opposition from Christian activists who oppose drinking, as well as from the state’s ABC boards, which fear the lost revenue that would likely come from new competition.

“The public health evidence is clear,” said Rev. March Creech, a Johnston County minister with the group Return America. “When alcohol becomes more available, alcohol-related harms increase.”

John Carr, who lobbies on behalf of ABC boards statewide, also opposed the measure. He said it could be seen as a slippery slope toward full privatization, where even full bottles of liquor might be available in grocery stores on day. But in the meantime, he said, it will certainly reduce sales at ABC stores — not just from people buying canned cocktails somewhere else, but also from the add-on sales, where someone might come to buy a pack of the premixed drinks but also decide to pick up a bottle of something else, too.

That will have a knock-on effect of reducing funds for the local city and county governments that benefit from ABC store revenue, Carr added.

The lawmakers on the committee Tuesday were almost entirely silent about their stance on every provision of the wide-ranging bill, leaving it to the assembled lobbyists and others to do the talking. But one chimed in on the issue of pre-mixed cocktails — Rep. Bryan Cohn, D-Granville, who said that even if local governments do lose some revenue because grocery stores will be allowed to compete with ABC stores in selling canned cocktails, the state government should wind up with more revenue overall, due to the increase in sales taxes.

Cohn, who works in the food-and-beverage logistics industry, said the boxes of canned cocktails are bulky, and often require refrigeration, which means that ABC stores don’t even stock many of them — but grocers could, especially with demand growing for those types of drinks.

“We're following what the market trends are, and that will ultimately lead to additional revenue coming into the system,” Cohn said, in support of the change.