Booze News

LCB’s ‘Convenience 2020’ Not So Convenient Here In 2012

You know what's missing from this shopping cart? Booze!
You know what’s missing from this shopping cart? Booze! Photo: Courtesy Stephen Cummings via Flickr

On first pass, Convenience 2020, the new initiative launched by the LCB to make life a little easier for Pennsylvania’s drinking class, sure seems like a good idea. Through easing rules on where and how beer, wine and spirits are sold, the beleaguered booze board, the AP reports, hopes to streamline the process of stocking the larder and the liquor cabinet, making it a one-stop shopping expedition. To do that, they’re working with three supermarkets scattered about Pennsyltucky’s hinterlands that already have the go-ahead to sell six- and 12-packs of beer. Each one is currently being fitted with a Garces Trading Company-like mini liquor store, where shoppers can snatch up a fifth of Maker’s Mark while loading up on groceries.

Surprisingly, the program rose from the ashes of House Majority Leader Mike Turzai’s crashed-and-burned efforts earlier this year to dismantle the liquor control agency. Though it’s a step forward in the ongoing fight to roll back the state’s achingly antiquated booze rules, it still smacks of LCB idiocy. In order to buy groceries, beer, and wine or liquor, shoppers at these three supermarkets must endure three separate check-outs. Convenient? It’s so convenient that those goofy-ass wine kiosks that they put the kibosh on last year are starting to seem like a stroke of genius.

PLCB wants to pair liquor stores, supermarkets
[AP via Pocono Record]

Earlier: One Million Dollars and a Whole Lot of Stupid Later, LCB Finally Pulls the Plug on Its Wine Kiosk Program

LCB’s ‘Convenience 2020’ Not So Convenient Here In 2012