B.C. Attorney General Suzanne Anton has no intention of tweaking upcoming liquor law changes to allow all alcohol retailers in the province the same freedom to select what products they want to sell, she told Business in Vancouver in a December 8 email.
“Leveling the playing field is not about creating a homogeneous retail market that has the same products on each block,” she said. “It is about helping small businesses remain individual and unique.”
Wine retailers, such as Liberty Wine Merchants owner Robert Simpson and Marquis Wine Cellars owner John Clerides, are angry at the government’s planned changes.
Clerides recently spent more than $1 million to renovate and expand his Davie Street store. He scoffed at the idea that a free enterprise government should legislate what products a small business can sell when its competitors have freedom to sell what they want.
“Small businesses should be free to make their own product choices in a free market,” said Clerides, who is not allowed to sell beer or spirits.
He was fine with that restriction in the past because he enjoyed preferential pricing to compensate for the restrictions.
Starting April 1, Clerides, and the owners of 11 other wine-only liquor licences, will lose their 30% wholesale discount off the British Columbia Liquor Distribution Branch’s (BCLDB) retail price.
Instead, they will pay the same wholesale price as owners of 670 beer, wine and spirits stores – entrepreneurs who currently only get a 16% wholesale discount off BCLDB retail prices.
The B.C. government’s planned pricing system for wine does away with wholesale discounts and, instead, gives all alcohol retailers a price equal to an 89% markup on the first $11.75 wholesale cost and 67% on any cost above that.
“Thanks very much Liberals," Clerides said. “They’re for small business, my foot – only if you are a vocal majority of small business people. If you’re a niche, specialized and unique, you’re swept away.”
Anton told BIV that the changes are being made to increase competition through “simplified pricing structures” that give all liquor retailers, including the government through its stores, the same prices.
“So, when we talk about leveling the playing field, we are talking about creating an even footing for all businesses to start at,” she said.
Simpson agreed with Clerides that legislating a limited product selection at some alcohol retailers while allowing unlimited product selection at others is anything but fair.
“We were counselled through the years and regulated in a way to develop our business in a certain manner, which we did. Now, all of a sudden, it’s changed,” he told BIV earlier this year.•
