Matt Rourke / AP Photo
‘We wanted to make one last run to Maryland before we can’t get any of the products we like”
Charles Thompson/PennLive
(Emmitsburg, Md.) — Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board has just restarted online sales of wine and spirits, giving Pennsylvanians at least the promise of slaking their thirst for hard liquor in these hard times.
Gov. Tom Wolf made the announcement during his Wednesday briefing on state government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, perhaps jumping the gun on the PLCB, which appeared to be planning a slow roll-out while it gets back on an operational footing.
“That (online) is the way to buy liquor during this crisis,” Wolf said. “That’s the safe way to do it and that’s how we’re doing it in Pennsylvania.”
It’s a welcome step for drinkers, who have also seen all of the state’s liquor-by-the-drink outlets closed since mid-March.
But with the agency’s 600 state-owned liquor stores still closed indefinitely as part of the Wolf Administration’s stop the spread efforts, there’s probably no quick end in site to a related Pennsylvania pandemic phenomenon – steady streams of cars and trucks bearing Pa. license plates crossing the state lines for the nearest liquor store.
We saw that firsthand here, this week.
Mountain Liquors is the first liquor store one sees when crossing the Pennsylvania / Maryland line on U.S. Route 15, coming south from Gettysburg.
Tuesday evening, you’d have been hard-pressed to tell which side of that state line it was on. Ten cars occupied the parking lot during a PennLive visit. Seven bore Pennsylvania license plates; two were Marylanders – and since they didn’t more during our stay we’re deducing that they belonged to the two staffers in the store.
The Pennsylvanians never stopped coming through the next hour, either.
“It’s a coronavirus closure run,” said Joe O’Toole, a Waynesboro retiree who used the occasion of that day’s extension of shelter-in-place orders to Franklin County to get out and get his last provisions. “We don’t buy that much but… we can’t go out after 8 p.m. tonight so we wanted to make one last run to Maryland before we can’t get any of the products we like.”
O’Toole and his wife JoAnn were buying wine; none of the groceries in their town have a wine-expanded permit that allows them to sell wine, so with the state stores closed, this 20-mile trip was their next best option.
It was their second trip to Emmitsburg since the March 16 shutdown, the O’Tooles said.
Pennsylvania is an absolute outlier in its decision to close liquor stores. While bars, restaurants and taverns that sell liquor by the drink have been closed throughout the Eastern Seaboard, liquor stores have remained open as “essential businesses” in all of the states that ring our borders: New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, West Virginia and Delaware.
The crush of Pennsylvania shoppers at one New Jersey store just across the Ben Franklin Bridge from Philadelphia caused it to close for several days last week after a “tsunami” of business.
“When Friday (March 20) hit, we had a massive influx of people,” Johnny Canal, a manager in his family’s Canal’s Discount Liquors in Camden County, told Pennlive’s sister outlet NJ.com this week. “We were up 120% over a normal Friday and Saturday. We were pulling so many people from Pennsylvania and a lot of people really didn’t care about social distancing and I could see the staff was getting worried.”
Canal said he tossed and turned in bed Saturday night before deciding to shutter the store Sunday. “We had to do something to protect the staff and the community,” Canal said. Canal’s reopened last Friday, restocked and a doorman dedicated to limiting the customer counts inside.
Nationally, liquor appears to be a creature comfort many Americans are clinging too as layoffs and cancellations mount. The market research firm Nielsen reported total U.S. sales of alcoholic beverages rose 55 percent in the week ending March 21, from the same period one year ago.
Wolf Administration officials have mostly refused to offer further explanations about their decision since the big close occurred March 16, instead standing on their statements that it’s a matter of stopping the spread of COVID-19.
“We understand the public wants to have access to wines and spirits during these unprecedented times, but we have a responsibility to mitigate community spread of this virus to every extent possible and make sure our employees and our customers are as safe as they can be,” Board Chairman Tim Holden said Wednesday in announcing the online reopening.
“We believe that re-opening FineWineAndGoodSpirits.com in a controlled manner will allow us to provide access to consumers while also protecting our employees and consumers from unnecessary risk.”
That hasn’t stopped many Pennsylvanians from wondering why, if it’s deemed safe enough for them to physically line up to buy wine and beer at a grocery store, they can’t be trusted to do the same at the state’s liquor stores, which happen to hold the monopoly on distilled spirits sales.
“I do wish they’d open them (state stores) back up. I’m working. They’re not shutting down my job,” said Robert Varner, 59, who helps build pallets at 48forty Solutions in Biglerville, Adams County. The firm’s wooden pallets are a part of the distribution and freight industry that has been deemed life-sustaining.
“It’s cheaper here,” Varner said, a freshly-scored bottle of vodka from Mountain Liquors in hand, “but see I’d rather pay a couple more cents and run closer to home.”
Some lawmakers share the border-jumpers’ opinion.
Sen. Pat Stefano, R-Fayette County and chairman of the senate committee that oversees liquor law in Pennsylvania, said he was hopeful that instead of closing the PLCB would instead take steps like controlling the number of customers in the stores at one time, reducing the hours of operation through the week, or offering curb-side pickup.
“I do believe the state stores can operate as safely as grocery stores, and I believe a lot of our small businesses can do the same,” Stefano said. “I’d like to see us get back to getting our economy running a little bit, while still keeping people safe.”
Signs on the door at Mountain Liquors advised customers that the store was on a pitch count; no more than 10 people inside at a time, including the staff.
Wolf, for his part, said Wednesday he doesn’t think he got it wrong with the liquor stores, and he’s not planning to open the stores anytime soon.
“Our liquor stores are closed and I think that’s going to be good for our employees in the liquor stores, and it’s also going to be good for the patrons. It’s one less place that that disease can be spread,” the governor said.
“How fast this disease takes off depends solely on how well we do staying at home,” Wolf continued. “The more we do that, the better we enforce this ourselves, the better position Pennsylvania is going to be in in terms of keeping ourselves safe.”
This is not exactly Prohibition, it must be noted.
Other outlets that are still selling other types of alcohol to go in Pennsylvania include the nearly 1,000 licensed breweries, wineries, and distilleries that make and sell their own product; restaurant licensees that can sell food and beer to go, up to two six packs per transaction; the nearly 1,000 groceries and convenience stores that have permits to sell wine and beer; and beer distributors.
As for the PLCB’s online sales program, officials do expect online demand to outstrip supply in the short term, and they note that access to the site will be “randomized” throughout the day – think a statewide consumer lottery – so that order availability isn’t exhausted in seconds or minutes each day.
The agency said it will take a controlled number of orders per day with plans to increase as fulfillment capacity increases. Customers who get in will be limited to purchasing up to six bottles per transaction from a reduced catalog of about 1,000 top-selling wines and spirits. All orders must be shipped to home or non-store addresses, and only one order per address will be fulfilled per day.
PennLive and The Patriot-News are partners with PA Post.