Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 8, 1993 TAG: 9308060012
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: John Levin
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Well, October's the wrong side of the zodiac, 10th day is close and the year . . . well, before I reach 82 the newspaper will have long since put me out to pasture.
This was not a carnival-like sideshow. The more serious issue is liquor sales. Before the grocer's check-out scanner would allow the cashier to sell me a bottle of cabernet sauvignon, she had to give the machine evidence the buyer was of age.
Because many customers resent being asked their age, when they're clearly old enough to drink the Kroger Co. allows its cashiers to enter a code that overrides the computer's question, hence the suggestion some of us were born in 1910.
"If there even the slightest doubt, they're to ask to see an ID," said Jim Reeves, risk manager for the supermarket company's 114-store mid-Atlantic marketing area based in Roanoke.
With the new software, the cashier enters the buyer's birth date, the computer computes the age and then decides whether to recognize the purchase. Bar codes allow the computer to identify alcoholic beverages from other products.
Having a cash register demand verification of a customer's birth date "gives the cashier a little more confidence in asking" as well as giving the company more assurance that the question's being asked, Reeves said.
It is not idle curiosity. We live in an era when society is drawing direct links between alcohol consumption and highway safety and lawsuits coming out of accidents more often include the source of a driver's intoxication as well.
Violation of state law regarding sale of alcohol to someone's who's underage or already drunk is a misdemeanor; the maximum penalty is $2,500 and a year in jail. For a store or restaurant, however, it more severe: suspension or loss of its license to sell beer, wine or liquor.
That's real money. The National Restaurant Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group, said beverages accounted for 18.1 percent of full-service restaurant sales of $84.4 billion in 1991. The figure included soft drinks as well as alcoholic beverages. And U.S. grocers in 1991 sold $39.2 billion worth of beer, wine and liquor, or nearly 6 percent of their total sales, according to Supermarket Business, a trade journal.
So, if moral and legal factors aren't sufficient motives, loss of a right to big sales provide another motive to meet the law for many retailers.
Servers and sellers are growing more concerned and more vigilant, said Wallace Van, assistant special agent in charge of the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Board's Roanoke district office.
"There's always been a segment of the population morally opposed to drinking. Now they're being joined by those concerned about the slaughter on the highways."
Evidence to him is raising Virginia's legal drinking age from 18 to 21 several years ago, the new state driver's permit that has profile photos of teen-agers and full-face shots of those at least 21 years, and a special task force of agents from ABC and the Department of Motor Vehicles that spend several months of the year looking for underage drinking and use of fraudulent IDs.
The task force made 485 arrests in the first five months of this year, the largest portion of them from the Roanoke district, Van said.
More evidence is the number of retailers sending clerks, waiters and waitresses to the ABC for training in state laws and how to deal with people who abuse them.
Southland Corp.'s Blue Ridge marketing office in Roanoke sends employees from its Roanoke Valley, New River Valley and Lynchburg 7-Eleven stores to ABC classes. The convenience stores' policy is to check ID of anyone under 26 years old, and it checks on its clerks by sending a youthful-looking but legally aged shopper into every store once a month to see if IDs are requested. Any clerk who fails that test twice in 12 months is fired.
Pargo's restaurant in Roanoke is one of those that gives new employees copies of its policy about ABC laws and requires them to sign a statement indicating it has been read and understood. Pargo's also fires any employee who violates the law, said Terri Scott, the dining and bar manager.
When the U.S. 220 restaurant opened last year, it quickly became a watering hole for the mid-20s crowd, Scott said. "We had to let it be known that we're a family restaurant . . . a dining room with a bar if the customer wants a drink, not the other way around."
That can be difficult without offending customers, whose bar tabs account for 16 percent of the restaurant's sales.
The policy sets a two-drink limit on potent liquor drinks and requires servers to keep track of how much alcohol a customer consumes in an hour. Servers are told to tell managers of anyone who appears intoxicated or orders more than the stated limits.
"We'd suggest they have a cup of coffee or something to eat," Scott said. "As a last resort, we'd say we just can't serve them."
More tricky is watching for people who've been drinking before they get to the restaurant. "When people walk in, you ordinarily don't think about whether they've been drinking."
The most sobering thought, Scott said: "I don't want anybody getting intoxicated in our store, getting in a car and killing someone. I don't want that on our shoulders."
Here are some other sobering facts, from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety based on 1992 U.S. Department of Transportation statistics:
After a sharp decline in the early 1980s of highway deaths involving drunken drivers, that percentage of fatalities has stayed in the 39 percent to 42 percent range.
52 percent of drunken drivers who died last year were 21 to 30 years old; 29 percent were 16 to 20 years. Yet, drivers younger than 30 account for less than half of those arrested for driving under the influence.
One in four drunken drivers who died in 1991 did not have a valid license.
John Levin fortysomething, is business editor of the Roanoke Times & World-News.
by CNB