Sunday liquor sales bubbling

BOISE – Sunday liquor sales have been a big success in Coeur d’Alene, the head of the state Liquor Dispensary told lawmakers Wednesday, and he’d like to expand them to other areas.

“It provides a convenience to the customer, and especially the tourist,” Dyke Nally told the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee.

Last year, state lawmakers agreed to give counties the option of allowing packaged hard-liquor sales on Sundays for the first time. Seventeen counties have opted to allow that, including most of North Idaho.

Initially, just private stores that contract with the state to sell liquor opened up on Sundays. But Nally said he opened up three state-run stores, in Coeur d’Alene, McCall and Ketchum, to see how they’d do.

“These stores have all had considerable increases” in sales, Nally told lawmakers. “Coeur d’Alene has been especially well-received.”

The state liquor store on Northwest Boulevard in Coeur d’Alene has had sales of close to $3,500 on Sundays, rivaling any other day of the week, said Ken Winkler, chief financial officer for the Liquor Dispensary. The break-even point for a state liquor store is just $350 in sales a day, or 24 bottles of liquor.

Between the three test stores, Winkler said, “They’re averaging $1,600 a day.”

Nally wants to add hours requiring six new full-time positions in state liquor stores, and open up 12 of the 52 state-run stores around the state on Sundays. The proposal was in the budget he pitched to the joint committee on Wednesday. Gov. Dirk Kempthorne has recommended approving it.

“Sunday is the second-largest shopping day in America right now,” Nally said. His plan would open one liquor store on Sundays in each of the state’s larger cities, with signage on the other stores in those cities to notify customers that there’s a store that’s open.

If his plan is approved, those cities would include Lewiston, Coeur d’Alene, Hayden, Sandpoint and Post Falls.

The move also would allow restaurants and bars that need to restock their liquor supplies to do so on Sundays, Nally said.

Lawmakers raised few objections to the plan Wednesday, though they won’t decide until later, when they vote on the Liquor Dispensary budget. The dispensary doesn’t use any state tax dollars; instead, for every dollar it spends from liquor sales, it returns $2.64 to the state. Liquor proceeds go to cities, counties, the state general fund, schools, courts and alcohol-treatment programs.

The dispensary made $28.3 million in profits on $86 million in sales in 2004, Nally said. It expects $32 million in profits this year, and $35 million next year.

Idaho has relatively low liquor consumption per capita, Nally said. The increased profits have come not from more drinking, but from customers trading up to higher-priced products like $30 bottles of high-end vodka. Because of that, he said, over the past five years, bottle sales are up only 17 percent, but dollar sales are up 32 percent.

Rep. Kathy Skippen, R-Emmett, said a contract liquor store in her area has welcomed the new Sunday sales law. The store already was open on Sundays, she said, but had to “chain off” its packaged-liquor section, annoying some customers. Beer, wine and canned cocktails could be sold on Sundays all along.

“They have increased sales, but they’ve said one of the things they like about it is they don’t have to deal with angry customers,” Skippen said.

Nally said Idaho’s state liquor stores charge lower prices than Washington’s, which has brought some cross-border traffic. “That’s why the little community of Post Falls has two liquor stores, and they’re both big volume,” he said.

In 2004, one Post Falls store had the second-highest sales of all state liquor stores, he said, second only to the downtown Boise store that supplies the area’s many bars and restaurants.

The state liquor dispensary also is proposing to open two new stores next year, one in Boise and one in Pocatello.