Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 2, 1995 TAG: 9508020021
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MEGAN SCHNABEL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
With names like Rum Runner and XXX on the Beach, and with brand labels including Jim Beam and Smirnoff, these new products are clearly not the familiar wine coolers.
Credit - or blame - the change on the Virginia General Assembly. Beginning last month, the law allows supermarkets and convenience stores to sell beverages whose labels suggest you expect to buy them only at the ABC store. Officially, the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Department calls them ``low-proof distilled spirit-based coolers.'' They are pre-mixed cocktails with an alcohol content of less than 7.5 percent. Most contain between 5 percent and 6 percent alcohol, about the same as most beer.
Unlike beer, however, these drinks contain distilled spirits - vodka, bourbon, rum, tequila - mixed with soft drinks or fruit juices. They're sold in cans and bottles and range in price from about $3 to $5 for four- or six-packs.
Only stores with ABC licenses may sell the cocktails, said Robert Chapman of the ABC. Grocery and convenience stores pay $175 a year for a wine and beer license, which also allows them to sell spirit-based cocktails. Restaurants that want to offer patrons XXX on the Beach or Rum Runners must have mixed-drink licenses, which cost $430 a year for restaurants that seat fewer than 100 diners and $1,100 for those that seat more than 100.
Don't expect to see Jack Daniels and Smirnoff bottles in every corner convenience store in Virginia, though. The state's 30 dry counties - those that permit the sale of beer and wine but don't allow the sale of mixed drinks - still will not sell the coolers.
With the new law, these cocktail mixes no longer are sold in ABC stores, where they accounted for only a small percentage of total sales, Chapman said. In the year ending June 1994, state ABC stores sold more than a million gallons of whiskey, 583,000 gallons of vodka, 328,000 gallons of gin and 196,000 gallons of rum - and just 75,000 gallons of ``cocktails,'' a catch-all category that includes coolers and schnapps.
``It's not like we're losing any large, or even significant, revenue from this,'' Chapman said.
Whether the new law will mean a big boost in revenue for grocers remains to be seen. The cocktails have been on store shelves for only a month, and neither bottlers nor local retailers have yet compiled sales figures.
Concerns about the new law have appeared faster than sales. Opponents are worried less about the alcoholic content of these cocktails - they are, after all, less potent than table wines, even if they do contain hard liquor - than they are about the presence of another sweet, alcoholic concoction that may appeal to underage drinkers.
Now that Jack and Jim and similar products are on the shelves at the neighborhood grocery store and not just at ABC stores, teen-agers are going to have an easier time buying them and possibly getting hooked on them, said Mark Cowell, administrator of Roanoke's Mount Regis drug and alcohol treatment center. Like wine coolers, these cocktails are sweet and often packaged in ``bottles that look like Tropicana punch,'' he said.
But local retailers who carry the cocktails said that their strict carding procedures eliminate problems with underage customers. Laura Radford, assistant manager of the Stop-In Food Store on Memorial Avenue, said the Roanoke store will not sell any alcohol to customers without identification.
Clerks from several other convenience stores who declined to be identified also said that their stores strictly enforce carding, and they added that the cocktails are shelved with beer rather than soft drinks or juices, where they might catch children's eyes.
As long as the companies making Electric Lemonade and Blue Margaritas don't misrepresent their products on labels or in advertising, then the beverages are legal, said Kris Denholm of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
by CNB