Wine in Grocery store bill fails in committee

[No_0ne]

This is nothing new.  The liquor lobby has been the most powerful group in Tn. politics for decades, rivaled only by the roadbuilder's group.  These bills will always fail given the amount of money being openly distributed on the hill ( google Tom "The Golden Goose" Hensley for one example).  The lobby is well-funded by the companies benefiting from these restrictions, and have honed their arguments for years, citing "warm and fuzzy" homilies about protecting native Tennessee businesses and families while these selfsame merchants enjoy monopolies not seen since feudal times.  Fast forward to next year and you will observe the same ritual, politicians making noise about changing the Royal Writs right up until the time the "Geese" deliver their proscribed payoffs.

[Mike.357]

If you think we're paying less for liquor, beer, and wine in TN because of these silly distribution laws...  you're kidding yourself.

 

How about the law that doesn't allow the owner of a product to switch distributors unless they take their product off the market for a year in the entire state?  How exactly does that not keep the price artificially high?

 

 

I suppose you know more about the wine and spirits business than I do so I will defer to your expertise on how this would effect pricing.

 

But you need to show me the law about products being taken off the shelf for a year.  That is flat out incorrect.  If a distributor in west TN wants to drop a brand and another wants to pick it up it has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the state and the other distribution areas.  AFAIK there is no law stating that.  The distributor I worked for previously dropped brands that were picked up by others and picked up brands dropped by others and nothing was ever taken off the market for much of any time.

[JayC]

You're right, if a DISTRIBUTOR wants to drop a brand, then another distributor can pick it up right away...  But if the owner of a brand wants to change distributors, and the current distributor doesn't want to 'give it up',  then the brand must be taken off the market in the entire state for a year before it can be moved over to another distributor.

 

And it's not technically a law, it's one of those great ABC "regulations" which helps protect entrenched businesses from new startups.  I know this because it bit me in the butt a couple of years ago when we moved to a new contract brewer, and his preferred distributor offered us a lot more money for the business than our old distributor was willing to part with :)  Ergo I found out about the 1 year rule of switching distributors if they don't want to release the brand.  At the end of the day it was worth the headache.

 

I suppose you know more about the wine and spirits business than I do so I will defer to your expertise on how this would effect pricing.

 

But you need to show me the law about products being taken off the shelf for a year.  That is flat out incorrect.  If a distributor in west TN wants to drop a brand and another wants to pick it up it has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the state and the other distribution areas.  AFAIK there is no law stating that.  The distributor I worked for previously dropped brands that were picked up by others and picked up brands dropped by others and nothing was ever taken off the market for much of any time.

 

[Guest HvyMtl]

The argument up here in the fingertip is that TN is losing considerable revenues as folks just step across the state line to VA and buy wine in grocery stores.  Of course, if they had any real integrity as to the "best practices" aspect of that argument, they'd also realize that folks can just walk across the state line and carry in ANY park in VA, and the local governing bodies can do nothing about it...

Same argument used to get the Lottery passed...