StateWays is the only magazine exclusively covering the control state system within the beverage alcohol industry, with annual updates from liquor control commissions and alcohol control boards and yearly fiscal reporting from control jurisdictions
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/83486
Ed Schmidt Director Wyoming Department of Revenue WYOMING The Wyoming Liquor tures for its move into the new warehouse facility. Retail Sales/Trends Division (WLD) con- tributed a record high of $14,289,433 to the State's General Fund in FY 2012, despite the fact that the division incurred signifi- cant additional expendi- During FY 2012 a total of 872,432 cases were sold. This is a 4.36% increase over FY 2011 sales. The FY 2012 dollar amount of cases sold was $92,066,007 for a 6.77% increase from FY 2011. Fortunately these sales trends indicate that the Liquor/Wine industry in Wyoming continues to grow and prosper. Wyoming has a robust economy and a low unemployment rate (5.3%). The State's General Fund is still healthy but is experi- encing some downturn due to low natural gas prices and State Agencies have been asked to prepare 8% budget cuts in the event that gas prices do not rebound. The WLD has experienced little pressure regarding the privatization issues that have plagued some of our sister control states. We believe this is primarily because Wyoming is a control state at the wholesale level only. In that regard the WLD has delivered unprecedented service to its vendors statewide, including a state-of-the- art E-Liquor ordering system, 24 hour delivery service anywhere in the state from order entry and providing split case service on virtually all products. Liquor Division Warehouse and IT Department The WLD's move to a new, temperature-con- trolled, 145,000 square-foot warehouse facility was com- pleted in February, 2012. The move was completed with minimal disruption to our deliveries and we experienced only three days of down time. The new facility is signif- icantly larger and conveniently located near Interstate 80, east of Cheyenne. The Administration Building has approximately 15,000 square feet of newly constructed offices for Division staff, a pleasant customer reception area and houses a 50 seat, multi-purpose conference room to be used for staff training, industry rep meetings and TIPS training. The conference room has spacious classroom-style seating and cutting edge audio visual technology which is being used by all divisions of the Department of Revenue as well as other State agencies. The warehouse is approximately 145,000 square feet and has 17 dock doors and significantly more space for StateWays s www.stateways.com s September/October 2012 23 parking and receiving trucks. The additional warehouse space allows for separate receiving and shipping areas, additional square footage for more "push back racking," a separate split case-conveyor picking line, and a "pick- to-voice" paperless, computerized pick ticket system. Compliance The Regulatory Section of the Wyoming Liquor Division has three main functions, enforcement of Wyoming's alcohol beverage control laws, review of all liquor licensing and serves as a resource to local licensing authorities in alcohol education which can be anything from alcohol server training to the training of city and county clerks and their staffs in licensing and alcohol law. In FY12 the regulatory agents completed over 2201 on-site, unannounced inspections. The compliance rate for FY2012 inspections was 93.9%. The Liquor Division once again partnered with the Wyoming State Liquor Association in providing alcohol server training utilizing the TIPS program. This collaboration trained 2358 students in FY2012 which is well over the goal of 1750 students trained per year. Regulatory agents reviewed over 1505 retail liquor license applications that were eventually issued or renewed by local licensing authorities. In addition the division's agents also reviewed and processed well over 850 applications that included direct shippers, industry representatives, malt beverage wholesalers, manufacturers and charter trans- portation. In FY2012, 5166 invoices for the wine/direct ship program were also processed. SW