Some interesting questions are brought up by a friend of mine on her weekly email from a liquor store where she is one of the owners.
From her email:
“Dan Paquette, co-owner of Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project, let loose a Twitter rant. In dozens of tweets, he went to town on ‘pay to play’ in Massachusetts bars, restaurants, and stores. From “ever walked into a bar and wondered why they don’t serve local beer?”, to ” Do you know a bar that takes money for their draft lines? .. Restaurant wine lists are purchased, by a winery or distributor. Retail ‘end-caps (i.e. prime display space) are reserved- for a fee. Distributors and suppliers pony up cash or expensive equipment. Retailers and restaurateurs agree to feature certain products and exclude certain others. And while all of these practices are technically illegal in MA, the Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission (ABCC) hasn’t brought one charge in over 15 years.”
“After a recent report showed that MA has the fifth-lowest ratio of enforcement agents to licensees in the country, State Treasurer Deborah Goldberg asked for a substantial increase to the ABCC budget. Governor Baker is on record as opposing this request.”
So we have laws that we cannot enforce because we can’t fund the labor costs involved and when State Treasurer Deborah Goldberg requests funds to enforce the law, Governor Baker says “nope”?
If it is statute why can’t Board of Health enforce like cigarettes?
Treasurer Deborah Goldberg asked for a substantial increase to the ABCC budget. Maybe we ought to ask her why.
if the ABCC hasn’t brought a single charge in 15 years, is a lack of funding really the major problem? Even if the ratio of agents to licensees is low, surely one agent in 15 years might have identified a problem, if the problem is indeed rampant?
as this story develops.
… if the “enforcement agents” aren’t actually out there enforcing… What, exactly, are they doing? You’d think that with such a low ratio what agents there are would be busier than a one armed paper hanger… ? Well, what are they doing?
and it appears the agents are mostly working on violations like serving underage drinkers.
What they are saying is they don’t have enough resources for investigations into issues like violations of laws concerning distributors.
While a “kid” getting drunk at a bar might be an important issue, you wonder why no one over the last X years thought that enforcing laws about alcohol distribution was important enough to request additional resources.
..That, and things like illegal gambling in bars and restaurants, illegal alcholic beverages (homegrown hootch?) and criminal ownership of liquor licenses (it’s illegal for a convicted felon to own or control a liquor license).
In fact, the ABCC doesn’t appear to have any such mandate to investigate such violations… at least none that I could find on the state website. I’m wondering if the complainants in this case (see email quote from above) are mistaken in their belief that ABCC is the proper agency here?
After all, the complaints they make, a la; “Retail ‘end-caps (i.e. prime display space) are reserved- for a fee. Distributors and suppliers pony up cash or expensive equipment. Retailers and restaurateurs agree to feature certain products and exclude certain others.”
…Are just as germane, one would think, to non-alcoholic based retailers… grocery and convenience stores pop immediately to mind… and they are surely regulated and enforce by some governmental agency. Stop n Shop, for example, can’t reserve ‘end-caps’ for a fee any more than can a package store? Shaws and Wegmans are forbidenn, just as strictly one should think, from featuring certain products and excluding others…? What agency serves that function for generic retailers, and do they cover package stores also? And, if they don’t, why the hell not?
In any event, I can’t find anywhere (not that I’ve looked incredibly hard…) that says ABCC is the agency to do that…
that stores without liquor licenses aren’t legally permitted sell shelf space?
… in regards to soda, where Pepsi and Coke replace A-B and Miller. If I remember correctly, part of the reason of expanding the big brand selections (Coke Zero, Coke w/ Lime, Cherry Coke…) was to take up more shelf space.
… beyond a (perhaps foolish) sense of consistency and an inability to discern the difference in alcohol retail and sober retail at the most basic level.
The complaint, as I’ve outlined, is fairly generic: agreeing to “feature certain products and exclude certain others” is not — as far as I can tell — pernicious only when product == alcohol and righteous otherwise. Nor are retail ‘end -caps’ limited to package stores: they are everywhere. I would assume some regulation on their use and/or abuse and would question why a difference if the retailer deals in alcohol or not.
Indeed, the question is begged: can a retail package store sell retail shelf space and prominently display potato chips and pass regulatory muster whilst also being denied the exact same for Jack Daniels?
Certainly, the converse of that question is reai: there is a Hannafords grocery store in Leominster that sells beer and wine. In fact, the beer is in coolers between the soda and the dairy and the wine is halfway across the store, by the dry goods, with end caps. Sounds like a ‘zoning’ nightmare, if the individual shelving spaces are regulated differently according to whether the product is alcohol or not… not to mention leaving the store open to real problems that may result from perhaps innocent mistakes in stocking practices. Maybe they are regulated differently, and maybe it is a logistical nightmare. It just seems… well… inconsistent: soda, diet soda, beer, milk and then a half a dozen aisles of groceries then, shampoo, wine, spices, nuts.
Indeed, wouldn’t the very decision of where to place alcohol, in the context of grocery store, fit the broadest definitions of “featur[ing] certain products and exclud[ing] certain others??
Yo be clear, you don’t have any idea. You’re just guessing. In fact, shelf space is negotiated in contracts, typically implemented at the store level by contractors (not store employees) using schematics known as “planograms.” (I only know this because my mom worked as one of these contractors for years, and I would work with her on high school and college vacations for extra cash)
This much is known: Real estate on the grocery shelves is largely allocated according to clout and to money passing to the retailer, either in fees or price discounts, according to Forbes.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to get Massachusetts-specific google results because google knows another string for Massachusetts is “Mass” which pulls up phrases like “mass marketing” and another string for Massachusetts is “Ma” which pulls up a bounch of “Ma-and-pa” references in this context.
Personally, I don’t think it’s inconsistent to treat pay-for-shelfspace for alcohol differently than foodstuffs since, after all, alcohol is regulated quite differently than foodstuffs.
I make no guesses. I ask questions. I only know that somebody complained about the ABCC not doing something they were purported to be tasked with doing. I first ask “if they aren’t doing this, what are they doing?” Then I went to their website, where I could find no mention, whatsoever, of any mandate to regulate shelf space on liquor stores. So then I asked, “is the ABCC the right agency?” I ask if regulating shelf space, regardless of the product, an aim of a different governmental agency? Nowhere, you should note, did I make a definitive statement either that ABCC was not, or some other, unnamed agency was…
Asking questions is one way I avoid quessing. If you think I’m spouting declarative sentences I have to wonder if you read through what I wrote with any degree of comprehension.
If foodstuffs and alcohol are in the same store, as in the example I gave, then how do we treat the inconsistencies? Is the Hannafords I mentioned subject to different (and inconsistent, perhaps even incompatible) laws regarding shelf space depending entirely upon the product that sits upon the shelf? And, if it is, how do they deal with that? Can the regulator who says “ok to sell space on shelf A, B and C” be overridden, or otherwise clash with, the regulator who says “Not ok to sell shelf space on A, B or C”. How does that work?
of saying “I am making shit up.”
It is petrsplaining.
…. how a series of questions is explaining anything? I have questions, I ask them. If you think what I’ve written is dispositive, makes any claim or purports to any expertise, then we might have to make up nasty nickname for “cmdreading”…
From the ABCC web site:
204 CMR 2.00:
REGULATIONS OF THE ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES
CONTROL COMMISSION
204-2.08: Inducements
No licensee shall give or permit to be given money or any other thing of substantial value in any effort to induce any person to persuade or influence any other person to purchase, or contract for the purchase of any particular brand or kind of alcoholic beverages, or to persuade or influence any person to refrain from purchasing, or contracting for the purchase of any particular brand or kind of alcoholic beverages.
…Wrong direction? The licensee is the store or restaurant. This regulation prohibits the inducement BY THE store or restaurant… and not TO THE store or restauraunt… or, at least the way I read this, and maybe I’m wrong, is that this regulation prohibits things like ‘two for one’ sales at liquor stores or happy hours at restaurants and bars and further prevents them from doing so at a remove by contracting with a third party to do such things. For example, when I was growing up, radio stations would routinely have special broadcasts from bars and restaurants actually inducing people to come in to the bar and/or restaurant and drink. That hasn’t happened, as far as I know, for some time.
It’s rather perplexing… Which is why I’m stuck on it. Whereas, the complaint is about inducements TO the licensee this statute is about inducements FROM the licensee: in the email quoted in the diary Dan Paquette co-owner of Pretty Things beer and ale actually speaks of “a bar that takes money” and “distributors and suppliers who pony up cash” whereas, if I’m reading it correctly, this statue applies to Dan Paquette and the other licensees who are forbidden from GIVING MONEY, that is, inducing people to buy their alcohol with cash or gifts. So I still don’t see where this regulation might give ABCC the authority to regulate shelf space or pursue distributors who pay for increased exposure for their product or decreased exposure for others… The statute gives ABCC authority to go after licensees who try to lure people to their store or restaurant with prizes and cash.