It’s been a year since grocery stores in Colorado began selling full-strength beer. That’s led to a rise in beer sales, but local liquor stores say they’re struggling to compete.
Factors like price, convenience and selection are leaving liquor stores behind as people buy their beer in grocery stores.
"It’s not local liquor stores. It’s local small businesses. If you take the local small business out of the equation, all you have is big business," said George Gatchis of Capitol Hill Liquors. "They have the convenience of going grocery shopping and being able to buy beer at the same time."
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From inside Capitol Hill Liquors at 9th and Corona in Denver, Gatchis is forced to watch his old customers go across the street and buy their beer at King Soopers.
"They’re selling the same six pack for $7.99 and we have to sell it for $9.99 to make any money," said Gatchis. "It’s the beginning of the end for a lot of mom and pop shops. Small businessman can’t compete against the big box stores."
It’s been 365 days since people in Colorado have been able to walk into grocery stores like King Soopers and buy full strength beer. That’s helped beer sales increase by more than 4% through August of 2019 from the year before, according to the Colorado Brewers Association.
To give a little perspective on how much beer sales have increased, data from the Colorado Department of revenue shows 7.9 million gallons of beer were taxed in January 2018. By January 2019 that number rose to more than 9.8 million gallons for the month.
For some liquor stores, not even New Year's brought in the same crowd as previous years.
"We’ve lost about 30, 35% of our business. We’re down in sales about that much," said Gatchis. "You let the genie out of the bottle. It’s never going back."
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