This is not a bash the North thread.

[MADem]

122. MOST stores do not do this--I heard that Deval changed the law, but I haven't seen it at

any store I frequent. They don't do it at the Stop and Shop I go to, nor the Market Basket, nor the Shaw's. The "packie" is NEXT DOOR to the grocery store--at every grocery store I go to, pretty much.

BTW, I was at a grocery store just the other day. I usually get stuck with the shopping duty, I do most of the cooking, too around this joint.

The closest I've seen to a grocery store/packie combo is a package store at the Star Market on Brookline Avenue (two blocks up from Fenway Park) having a self-contained package store INSIDE the store, with separate cash registers to purchase anything alcoholic, and a gate that they can pull down to segregate the alcoholic beverages from the groceries late at night or at other times when they are closed -- a separate business that shared the same exit/entrance.

You must be a lucky duck, and be near one of the very few stores that has gotten a license to do this--it's RARE. STILL!! I would not be suggesting to people that they can routinely buy beer/wine at MA supermarkets, because at most, you cannot, still. This contrasts with NH and ME, where, at most, you can:

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2011/11/23/new-law-allows-sales-of-beer-wine-at-more-mass-supermarkets/

Companies that own multiple stores around the state can now sell beer and wine at no more than three of those stores. The bill — which won the approval of the Massachusetts House and Senate — would allow for two additional licenses in 2012, two in 2016 and two more in 2020.

All these dots in the picture below represent just "Stop and Shop" stores. By this new law, only FIVE of them in MA are currently allowed to have alcohol sales. In two years, it'll be seven, and in six years, it'll be nine. That's hardly a dent in their overall franchise. If you don't live near one, well, you don't benefit.



I also saw a place where you could buy "groceries" years ago (that went out of business) on the Cape that had a beer/wine license; it was a place that sold cooked food and had high end, way-the-hell overpriced fancy prepared meats/fish and groceries in it, that catered to wealthy people on yachts. It wasn't for regular folk, it was for rich people. They sold "groceries" but they also sold breakfast, lunch and dinner, which is how they got around the licensing issues.

MA laws are better than they were a half century ago, but they are still quite antiquated when it comes to alcoholic beverage sales. The liquor store lobby is POWERFUL in this state; they've pushed back hard on mail delivery of fine wines; and they've greatly limited availability of beverages in supermarkets, as I've demonstrated.

See http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2011/12/18/mass-liquor-lobby-flexes-muscle-aid-package-stores/GJka3JClNvQn2HIUMwVPLL/story.html

And note this piece:

Grocery stores will be able to sell beer as well as wine in more of their stores, but only by buying existing liquor licenses, not by creating a new kind. Packies - many of them mom-and-pop operations - will gradually face more competition, but their licenses will retain their value.

Not only do the stores have to wait to be allowed to buy licenses, they also have to buy them from someone willing to sell one--which means that only very high traffic super-stores are going to cough up, because those licenses cost a frigging fortune.