At the time, officials decided that liquor stores would be the only businesses able to sell spirits and wine, and each business owner could only have a single license. If Krueger’s bill passed, it would upend rules that have been in place since 1934, when New York began regulating the sale of alcohol after prohibition. This is one of the few local businesses left,” he says. “How many bakers and butchers are left? There’s no artisans any more. Allowing wine to be sold in supermarkets would be “another example of small businesses getting mauled”, says Michael Correra, the owner of a liquor store, Michael-Towne Wine and Spirits, and the executive director of the Metropolitan Package Store Association, which represents liquor stores across the city. Wegmans reportedly donated more than $30,000 to the campaign, and it has even put up signs in its stores promoting the bill that read: “It’s time for wine.” The grocery chain did not return a request for comment.īut New York City liquor stores say they are defending an endangered, more intimate tradition of commerce that makes the city special. Photograph: ullstein bild Dtl./Getty Images A recent poll commissioned by Wegmans showed New Yorkers strongly in favor of allowing wine sales in grocery stores, including 70% of voters in New York City and 79% of voters upstate.Ī New York restaurant in 1929, during prohibition. Paul Zuber, the executive vice-president of the Business Council, a New York industry group that represents Wegmans, blames “extremely organized, self-entrenched interests” for defending “this archaic, anti-business, anti-expansion statute”, which is “not what the people want”. “But I’m hoping that New Yorkers will take a look at our whole approach to how and where we sell different kinds of alcohol and say, ‘This doesn’t really make sense any more.’” The bill’s sponsor, the state senator Liz Krueger, acknowledged the bill’s failure to the New York Post last week. The latest try, a New York state bill with the public support of the Wegmans company, also failed after this year’s legislative session ended on Thursday. His suspicions are correct: the biggest opponents of reform are New York City’s roughly 3,700 liquor stores, which have beaten back multiple attempts to allow wine to be sold in grocery stores, including a prominent push by the former governor David Paterson in 2009.
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