Package stores are starting to close because they can't get enough product to sell from the ABC warehouse. The Washington _____ reported:
Business owners across the state say they are in a state of emergency. Restaurants in Jackson had no wine on Valentine’s Day, and bars on the Gulf Coast ran dry before Mardi Gras. At least five liquor shops have closed, and if cheap pints don’t hit the corner stores soon, many of them will, too. “We’re hanging on by the skin of our teeth,” said Shaun Blakeney, the manager of Arrow Wine and Spirits in Clinton. “This store’s my whole world, and I don’t want to lose it.”... Mississippi lawmakers have urged business owners to be patient, but as both the state and its businesses lose millions in revenue, many say they see no real end to the crisis. Nearly 174,000 cases of alcohol are sitting in a warehouse north of Jackson, but no one seems to know how to get them out the door. Another 1,200 products — “the staples,” Blakeney calls them — are out of stock all together. Even the shops that have received deliveries say they often get the wrong thing — Jell-O shots, for instance, that should have been small-batch Norwegian gin.... Blakeney isn’t the type to court trouble, but she and Willie, the one-eyed mascot, used to make 300 to 400 sales a day. Last week, she had just 34 customers.... Gourmands in Jackson could no longer order a nice cabernet at the French restaurant with a Michelin recommendation. Brandi Carter runs the wine program at Elvie’s — along with her own natural wine shop, Levure. As her options at both places dwindled, she began to worry about the acclaimed restaurant’s standing. Most years, it’s a finalist for the James Beard awards. What if her newly spare wine menu cost them the honor? ... And when Gulf Coast liquor stores ran out of bottles before Mardi Gras, more than one reported that desperate revelers had either cussed them out or promised to take their business to Louisiana. But perhaps no one has been hit as hard, business owners across the state say, as the people who run corner stores. Though the warehouse still has plenty of high-end liquor in stock, no one can get the cheap vodkas that fuel addiction and sustain small shops across the state. Blakeney has always worked 58 hours a week, but as the crisis dragged on, she and the boss decided they could only afford to keep the shop open five hours on Friday afternoons. Rest of article.
The State to ABC customers: Just hang on.
35 comments:
State is violating interstate commerce clause. Federal slam dunk.
All this to cut costs on keeping the conveyor belt system running for one year, until the new facility was ready.
Revenge of the Baptists
Death to liquor stores.
Cutting down on the amount of alcohol sold is not necessarily a bad thing. Silver lining maybe?
the state has no business, in todays market, being in booze sales and distribution. I would also argue that the state has no business entering into contracts as it appears they entered into a contract with no penalty for the provider not meeting basic business / distribution standards. Gov, should issue executive order terminating the contract, and shuttering ABC, opening the state up to free markets......the State would quickly re-capture lost revenue, remove a burden it can not handle anymore, and grow the states economy
“Interstate Commerce Clause” sounds good, but alcohol is one of the few areas where states have broad authority under the 21st Amendment.
A broken distribution system isn’t automatically a federal violation—you’d have to show the state is discriminating against out-of-state commerce, not just struggling to get product out of its own warehouse.
That’s a management failure, not a constitutional slam dunk.
100% the state has no business in this space. They have no problem taxing other goods WITHOUT serving as the expensive and defective middleman. It is all about control. We're supposed to be all conservative, limited government, etc. but for some reason have let the BAPTISTS force us into a situation where the state has to control every drop of wine and liquor. Absolute insanity, and the opposite of conservative values. Tate and the legislature have let their religious and other beliefs push us into a state of liberal wokeness. SAD!!
The preamble to the constitution is all the government, either federal or state should have minion over. Anything past that should be viewed as an overreach of power.
There are multiple liquors that I drink that are produced in other states that can not be gotten by ABC here in Ms. I can not go to a liquor store and get the product due to the warehouse deciding not to carry it. The liquor store itself would be happy to get it in for me as stores in other states do OR I could order it online and have it delivered if I lived IN OTHER STATES. For a state that is so big on personal freedoms why are we letting anyone control what we are allowed or not allowed to purchase.
For those items I will continue to order and have them delivered to a friend right over the state line and MS will continue to lose out on that little bit of tax and liquor revenue even more.
I feel sorry for the business owners. It just dumbfounds me that ABC had one very important job---distribution. And that's the one thing they can't seem to do.
Mississippi Republicans may be a lot of things, but CONSERVATIVE isn’t one of them.
Conservatives believe in free markets. Mississippi Republicans clearly do not.
They’re big-government central planners. “Socialists,” even.
1:13, I was unaware the Baptists were behind this. I would love to read more on it if you wouldn’t mind posting a link.
Tell us you hate the lobbyists but use about 200 words!
"Tate and the legislature have let their religious and other beliefs push us into a state of liberal wokeness. SAD!!"
Mississippi: run by Republicans.
Also Mississippi: somehow suffering from “liberal wokeness.”
At some point the math has to show its work.
I don't drink hard liquior and I brew my own beer, so i'm good. I guess there's a lot of southern baptists with drinking problems though
@1:13...agreed, the state has no business in this space. Agreed, they have no issue taxing everything. Agreed they are a defective middleman.....But, ABC existed under democrat and republican governors and legislatures, as well as protestant and catholic leadership (conservative / liberal)......this problem existed long before Tate......this is about control and money....that is all.
The legislative branch of government in the state (and I would argue federally as well), is one of the biggest threats to freedom, welfare, and financial independence for all
Chris Graham should have been fired weeks ago.
Shipping and receiving. Another simple thing made complicated by government interference. Just get out of the way and let us do it right, please.
WHERE IS THE LEADERSHIP -- TATE? Glad he wasn't Governor during Katrina. Mississippi deserves better!!
If at any point since you have lived in MS you thought anyone in the legislature was competent, slap yourself. It is nothing but a collection of pretenders and wannabees.
The friendliest people in the world work at the liquor store in the south side of the delta exit (first exit off the bridge), just on the Louisiana side of the Mississippi River Bridge. I have fond memories of crossing the bridge to get a fifth and a lottery ticket before they instituted the lottery in Mississippi. Back to booze - They have a nice selection, better than most stores in Mississippi, good prices, and are open 24/7 for you late night panic buyers. Just don't drink and drive. The last thing we need is for the idiots and crooks who run the Mississippi Warehouse to make I-20 a more dangerous stretch of highway than it is already. By the way, the problem is 100% the fault of the private company that runs the warehouse and the crappy computer program they purchased to take the place of the one they ran (the old program) that made it possible for their employees to steal them blind. Maybe that will eventually come out. It deals with broken case tracking and nothing other than full case shipping. Enough said about that.
Wait, there is a liquor availability issue in MS? Had I not read this, I would have never known. Of course, I don’t drink so that could also be the reason.
Well, you can get just about any whiskey you like at a Walmart in Louisiana, including some really expensive stuff. If I got arrested coming home with it, well then that might trigger something, especially if I was a lawyer and I could show that the incompetence of the state led me to do this.
Only in government would nobody be fired yet. I mean, at least fire some lackey in the warehouse and act like you are doing something.
2:12, This is whole boondoggle is the result of the the ABC warehouse being completely outsourced to a private company.
If you want to point the finger, point it at Ruan Transportation. That's the contractor who was in complete control of this fiasco.
1:03, I'd be willing to bet this hasn't cut down on anyone's overall alcohol consumption for more than a couple of days.
It's past time for Wingate and Henefin to take over this mess.
Back in the day this crap would have never happened.
If the whiskey had dried up at the Sun 'n Sand during a legislative session, many heads would have been chopped off and be rolling down Capitol, Congress, High, & State Streets the next afternoon.
4:02. Surely you jest?! Federal Courts move at the speed of racing turtles.
"...the cheap vodkas that fuel addiction..." Leave it to Kingfish to post some shit like that.
Point the finger at the numbskull who selected the vendor.
Lawmakers and especially the speaker don’t give a dam about local businesses! They all need to go !!!
Ha ha. It’s democrats
Exactly
Anyone surprised by this fiasco has never worked for the State of Mississippi and suffered from the pervasive grifting by legislators.
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