Wegman's Selling Beer & Wine

The Scranton Times recently reported that Wegman's has been granted Restaurant liquor licenses for some of their PA stores. This will allow them to sell beer & wine by the glass in their Market Cafe section. They will also be able to sell the 2 six pack (192 ounces) to go.

It's interesting as Colleen Wegman, Danny's daughter, recently purchased Century Wine & Spirits, one of the high end Wine & Liquor stores in Rochester, New York. Might be interesting to see how Wegman's plays in the wine & spirits market in PA.

Story on news radio in Pittsburgh yesterday mentioned this, and that beer distributors were very much against it (surprise). Their argument was that a beer distributor can apparently only have one license while Wegman's got several licenses, one for each store; they claimed a competitive disadvantage. Every beer distributor I've ever been in in this state is basically a garage with lots of posters of bikini-clad women holding beer. Seems to me that they aren't too concerned with competition, so if this makes them raise their game a little I'm all for it.

I wish we had Wegman's at this end of the state; my brother-in-law used to live in Rochester and practically worshiped at the Wegman's altar he loved it so much.

Ah, upstate New York. In a previous business life I traveled every week to Buffalo & Rochester and my knowledge of beer & wine flourished (as did my spending). I was more a TOPS International shopper because of locations but the practices were similar. You could buy individual bottles of beer back in the hey day of microbrews, allowing you taste styles you hadn't tried and brewers you didn't know. There's no way I'd have plunked down $30 for a case of Upper Canada Lager w/o having tried it for $1.69/bottle.

Likewise, the private wine stores often had knowledgable owners. If I remember correctly it was a Century store on Jefferson in Rochester that had a guy that could pair wine with food unbelievably well. One of my college friends still lives in Rochester and he brought a Pinot down to the lake because we were having prime rib. We opened before dinner and it tasted like Pinot Dogsweat. With the prime rib it was as good a red as I can remember.

Aside from the opportunity to reminisce, these posts remind that our only hope is to keep taking opportunities to hammer the legislature and let Harrisburg know that someone cares. Clearly, the wine drinkers have gotten on PLCB's radar, even if every move doesn't satisfy us.