It wasn't surprising to find many grocery companies are reluctant to give too much information about their deployment and investments leading up to June 1, the day liquor can be sold privately across Washington state. That's the day Initiative 1183, approved last fall by state voters, takes all liquor sales out of the hands of the state and transfers it to thousands of retail locations.

We were mostly surprised by how candid and helpful Rosauers Supermarkets CEO Jeff Philipps has been. See the story we printed here. 

Our online story now includes comments unavailable when we printed the paper version. The new comments are from:

• Winco Foods, based in Boise. Spokesman Mike Read noted that Winco is placing its liquor not near beer or wine shelves, but in a separate secure location in the customer service area of its two Spokane stores.
• Gary Morgan of Trading Co. Stores, which operates three stores in Spokane County. Those three stores are still planning how best to install shelves, security systems and inventory controls, Morgan said. He said the stores aren't going to be selling liquor on June 1, as the planning proceeds.  They will later, he said.

Also, a number of other retailers didn't respond at all. Notably, Safeway repeatedly received requests for a comment but chose not to respond.

Sometimes we just move along with the material given to us and don’t stop to think what’s been said.

Point in case, the earlier post we had about MacKenzie River Pizza coming to Spokane next year, near the big new WinCo.

The COO of Glacier Restaurant Group said one reason for that site is the nice avaiability of north Spokane’s residential population. And it also helps by letting “us reap the visibility benefits while avoiding the clutter of the competition.”

We will follow up and try to nail down what the “clutter” referred to really is.

See the previous Office Hours post below for the full story.