Stateways

Stateways Jan-Feb 2013

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

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Key members of the Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board include, from left, Randall Smith, Product General Manager; Rickey D. Mobley, Board Member; William E. Thigpen, Assistant Administrator; H. Mac Gipson, Administrator; Samuetta H. Drew, Board Member; Robert W. "Bubba" Lee, Board Chairman; and Nick Ketter, Product Director. By Cheryl Ursin T he Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board (ABC) has plenty to celebrate. By September of 2012, according to the latest figures, its total sales, both retail and wholesale, were projected to be over $378 million for the year, an increase, in dollar sales, of almost 5%. (Case sales were up 2.3%.) And its contributions to the state budget are on track to reach almost $210 million, an increase of 6.7%. The 912 employees of the Alabama ABC continuously look for ways to innovate: cutting business expenses, running their wholesale and retail operations more efficiently, working on their service to and relationships with customers, licensees and suppliers, and honing their enforcement and education efforts. Wholesaling & Retailing T he Alabama ABC controls all the wholesaling and most of the retailing of distilled spirits in the state. Its two warehouses at its headquarters in Montgomery generally contain about 250,000 cases of distilled spirits (300,000 at peak times like the holiday and football seasons) and ships those cases out, at the rate of 10 trailerloads, or about 45,000 cases, per week, to the state stores. Those 172 stores, in turn, sell to consumers and also to licensees, including the state's approximately 535 licensed package stores. Allowed to open by a court ruling in the early '80s, these licensed package stores can sell distilled spirits, as well as other products, such as beer, snacks and ice. (The state stores sell only spirits.) These package stores fill a niche in the market, explained Randall Smith, who, as the ABC's product general manager, is in charge of the state stores. "We are the supermarket and they are the 7/11," he said. The package stores can be open longer hours, but their prices for distilled spirits are generally higher than those in the state stores. (Package-store licensees buy their distilled spirits from the state at a 10% discount on consumer prices and without sales tax.) During a recent television interview, on a local PBS news show called "Capitol Journal," H. Mac Gipson, the ABC's administrator, pointed out that in the town of StateWays I www.stateways.com I January/February 2013 11

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