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LCBO / The Beer Store

Should the LCBO be deregulated?


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I thought when the LCBO strike started they said on the 19th of July (tomorrow!) is that still the plan? I see no notification on the LCBO website or reports in local media
Further to my above post I saw this report from earlier in the month:


"For the first 14 days of the strike — beginning on July 5, if no deal is reached — the LCBO said all of its retail stores across the province would be closed. From July 19, if the strike were to still be ongoing, 30 stores would open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday for a limited number of hours."

Whatever happened to that plan? Did 30 stores open today?
 
Further to my above post I saw this report from earlier in the month:


"For the first 14 days of the strike — beginning on July 5, if no deal is reached — the LCBO said all of its retail stores across the province would be closed. From July 19, if the strike were to still be ongoing, 30 stores would open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday for a limited number of hours."

Whatever happened to that plan? Did 30 stores open today?

No. They nixed that idea.

Decided to redeploy staff to the warehouse and online ordering.
 
I was rather surprised to see my store at Manulife so empty this morning, I was in and out in five minutes (with Champagne, today is our anniversary).

I has a similar experience today, no lineup.

Granted, Tuesday, Mid-day is not normally a busy time for LCBO, but one might have thought there would have been some inordinate level of business today. Of course, if people have been stocking up/hoarding through online orders, and/or beer store/ wine rack etc.......then that may explain the less voluminous traffic.
 
As a footnote to the above discussion, I was in the Loblaws at Bathurst/Lakeshore over the weekend, they normally sell wine.........not one bottle.........not one. No plonk, no premium, and nothing in-between.

They were filling some of the space w/beer.

But some was just empty.
 
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I has a similar experience today, no lineup.

Granted, Tuesday, Mid-day is not normally a busy time for LCBO, but one might have thought there would have been some inordinate level of business today. Of course, if people have been stocking up/hoarding through online orders, and/or beer store/ wine rack etc.......then that may explain the less voluminous traffic.
I know of a couple of local craft breweries that have been routinely sold out of cans during the strike
 
We went to a Sobeys in cottage country near the end of last week, and they had been cleaned out of everything except a few macrobrews. No wine, no beer, just Bud Light etc.
 
How long should the LCBO supply chain take to catch up, ie restoking the grocery and agency stores? Will it take a week, two weeks or more?
To me this shows that no matter how much you open up the retail side, having the LCBO as a monopolistic wholesaler is what needs to be rethought. What is so wrong with Sobeys/Metro/Lablaws from dealing directly with Molson/Coors or InBev? Why couldn't an individual Ma and Pop store make a deal with the local Winery or Craft Brewer?
 
The LCBO is now being sued by some of the largest alcohol producers...Saying they're using their market dominance and unfairly charging suppliers, forcing producers to raise prices to an unreasonable amount.

Monopolies do nothing but rip off consumers.

 
The LCBO is now being sued by some of the largest alcohol producers...Saying they're using their market dominance and unfairly charging suppliers, forcing producers to raise prices to an unreasonable amount.

Monopolies do nothing but rip off consumers.


The argument being made here is that the LCBO has two contradictory policies.

1) Is that it sets a minimum retail price in Ontario for products based on its markups and fees, and it actually won't allow the manufacturer/distributor to sell the product to them at a lower price (insane, I know).

The LCBO has always had this backwards, it decides first what it wants to sell the product for, then works backwards to the price its willing to pay.


2) The LCBO has a 'most favoured customer' clause in its contracts demanding that it get the lowest price of any buyer.

****

These two policies clearly contravene one another. They essentially seek to impose a minimum price at which those sellers can sell to any other province. That arguably violates competition laws, though with all provinces having liquor monopolies except for Alberta.......I'm not sure that's the key argument.......... I would argue it violates provincial sovereignty.

Regardless, you can't sustain the two contradictory policies.
 
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