November 27, 2009 11:26 PM UTC

Liquor laws and other weirdity in suburban Denver

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• by: BICora

I spend most of my time in the burbs on the east side close to home or further south visiting family. I’m downtown for stuff from time to time.

And I’ve lived enough other places to miss Trader Joes* and other regional retailers (Ikea, In & Out, and others) and water sport and and. I also understand there’s going to be regional variation  in politics- Colorado Dems are not Califrona Dems, Arap County Dems are not Cook County Dems, etc.

And I was really glad that Colorado finally allowed liquor sales on Sunday.  Now it’s just new cars from a  dealer I can’t buy on Sunday here (though I’m not sure why I’d want to ever do that).

So I’m driving around the southwest burbs Wednesday  and I popped into Safeway the day before  Thanksgiving to kill an hour. And whaddya know! They have a full fledged liquor store.  I’d heard the rumour but there it was.

People were food shopping on one side of the store, and some of them even had wine or beer or liquor in their cart. And people were shopping for wine in another part of the store.  Civil order appeared to be in place. There were some odd people in the place- but in the southern burbs I think that’s to be expected.

They also had a smoothie bar, a coffee bar and a sushi bar. Now I don’t eat sushi- but does Colorado also have a law prohibiting the sale of sushi at multiple locations?

But here’s the thing. I don’t get why anyone would stand behind the liquor sales restrictions in Colorado anymore.  The lack of multiple locations is one thing, the lesser known requirement that retailers must acquire from a CO wholesaler (a rule which I don’t fully understand) is just criminal.

So there I am in Safeway- which in other states (AZ and CA) is the land of cheap store brand liquor.  Safeway Select vodka, for example. But not here – they’d have to sell it first to a CO wholesaler and then buy it back.

So I understand that regulating insurance (and other financial products) has a legitimate (so far) state need.  But since the feds (ATF) regulate liquor- why do we need a separate CO layer of licensed wholesaler in order to retail it at a single location? Seems like the R’s would get behind deregulation, seems like we could all get behind a freer market. Especially if it means cheaper drinks.

What am I missing?

*I think I’ve figured out why Trader Joe’s will never come to Colorado. Assuming I understand the basic TJ’s business model, about 30% of the floor space (or more) is for liquor in the form of hi-end beer and all kinds of wine, including their own label. But that floor space generates 65% + of the revenue. So in Colorado that model doesn’t work- no liquor at multiple locations, you can’t retail your own product with out selling it to and then buying it back from a wholesaler.

So the Sunday rule was the biggest inconvenience but only the smallest part of the  problem.