Retail Watchers

I hope this is the correct place to post this, as it mainly pertains to Washington. Fred Meyer has been preparing for this by rearranging areas of the store, however I have not been to any other large stores recently so I am not sure who else has been making changes already.

The state-owned liquor stores are now on the auction block:

http://tdn.com/news/local/state-run-liq ... 963f4.html

This could be a very interesting transition.

I'm going to move this to specialty retail since it's more about the state liquor stores and not grocery, per se...

I know of at least one effort underway to get the ballot initiative to privatize liquor sales overturned in the courts on a technicality (which is a slightly nicer way of saying "it'll be overturned if the government doesn't like it",) so they may not be getting rid of those just yet...

This post is informational for those who may be interested in bidding on individual liqour stores or a system wide bid for all liquor stores currently owned and opearted by the state of Washington.

There is a provision in I-1183 (the intiative passed by the voters in Washington forcing the privatization of Liqor sales) that the owners of these businesses or any holder of a Spirits Retail License must pay to the state of Washington, 17% of all revenues derived from the sale of distilled spirits.

This is in addition to the 20.5% sales tax on liquor and your other licenses and state B and O taxes. Please figure this in when considering your bid on one or all of these stores.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/b ... uor22.html

It sounds like QFC also negotiated a clause into at least some of their store leases prohibiting privately-owned liquor stores in the same shopping centers where their stores were located, which has left some bidders unable to obtain leases for the former state stores.