Liquor stores fear grocery wine sales
It's a grass-roots campaign. It's Astroturf activism. It's a clash of lobbying titans. It's an issue of consumer rights, or religious freedom, or public safety, or jobs, or tax revenues.
Those are the buzzwords in the fight over whether Tennessee grocery stores should be allowed to sell wine, which for the third time in three years heads back to the legislature on Tuesday.
On one side is the Tennessee grocer's lobby, in the second year of its Why Not Wine campaign. On the other is the state's mighty liquor lobby, which has enjoyed a lock on retail wine sales in this state since the repeal of Prohibition.
Both have launched full-bore campaigns, hoping to win over the public and undecided lawmakers. Both have circulated petitions: 11,000 signatures for wine in the grocery stores, 9,000 against.
But behind the slick marketing campaigns are genuine grass-roots emotions, and some very real hopes and fears. And the people most afraid right now may be Tennessee's 550 wine and liquor retailers, who worry what competition with national grocery and retail chains could mean for their business.
Nine years ago, Bard Quillman retired after 30 years in the banking business and invested his savings, and his future, in Red Dog Wine & Spirits in Franklin. Immediately next door to his shop is a Publix supermarket. Quillman dreads what could happen if the grocery starts selling wine.
Retailers fearful
"Am I worried? Yeah, I'm scared," Quillman said. "This is a real-world situation for us. It shouldn't be blown off as an issue of 'convenience.' "
His shop is a high-end, specialty store, but he says cheaper wines — box wines, jug wines, the sort of no-frills wines that groceries would likely stock — make up the bulk of his sales, and allow him to branch out into the more exotic, specialty brands. The price of a bottle of wine at Red Dog Wine & Spirits can range from $3.50 to $200.
Quillman figures he'd lose 30 percent of his business to Publix and surrounding retail chains. The way he reads the law, it would allow wine sales not only in groceries, but also at gas stations, drug stores and big-box stores like Walmart as well. Right now, there are three places in Franklin that sell wine. If the law changes, he says there could be as many as 24.
"My employees all have health insurance, disability insurance, life insurance," he said. Right now, he has four full-time employees, but if the law changes, "I'd have to terminate at least one of them, plus one part-time employee."
In downtown Nashville, Midtown Wine & Spirits would be facing layoffs and cutbacks as well, said manager Chris Shearer.
"This will have a devastating effect on the mom-and-pops," Shearer said. Downtown, there are few competing grocery stores, but he worries what might happen if the nearby gas stations and convenience stores start selling high-proof fortified wines in neighborhoods teeming with underage college students and at-risk youth.
Convenience issue
"We understand it's a convenience issue, but at the same time, there are costs associated with convenience," said Shearer, who figures that Midtown would have to lay off at least one of its eight employees to offset sales losses from grocery wine sales.
Convenience is the rallying cry for the Tennessee Grocers and Convenience Store Association, whose members have set up 6-foot-tall cardboard cutout wine bottles in more than 100 Middle Tennessee stores, urging customers to lobby their lawmakers to support the grocery wine campaign.
The campaign resonates with customers like Erika Mitchell, who enjoys a glass of wine with dinner every now and then.
"I come to the grocery store to get what I need for a meal, and if I'm having guests over I'd want a bottle of wine and it would be convenient to get it at the same place," she said. "I would still go to the liquor store if I wanted some specialty liquor or a specialty bottle of wine, but I would just like the convenience of getting wine with my daily shopping."
But not all wine customers are sold on the idea that they need access to wine outside the liquor store. Tracy Boyd of Franklin sees no reason to change the law.
"I think Tennessee has enough to say grace over right now," she said.
On Tuesday, the fight moves back to Capitol Hill. For the past two years, wine-in-grocery legislation has fizzled in committee without a single vote.
Visible campaign
This year's campaign is the most visible yet, and both sides are bringing their big guns.
The liquor lobby has on its side the Southern Baptist Convention and most of state law enforcement — groups that take a dim view of anything that will increase public access to alcohol. The grocery lobby is backed by the ever-increasing ranks of transplants who moved to Tennessee from one of the 30-plus states that allow grocery wine sales.
A recent statewide poll by Middle Tennessee State University found that 62 percent of those polled support grocery wine sales, while 26 percent oppose the idea. A recent Associated Press poll of state lawmakers found the bulk of them undecided on the issue, and the rest split almost evenly between the two sides.