While many products at ABC stores around Mecklenburg County remain out of stock, the local ABC board says it’s implementing changes to try and alleviate supply issues caused by labor and bottle shortages and transportation slowdowns. One of the biggest changes now in effect is the ability to directly ship to the stores in our area, bypassing the need for alcohol to be sent past Charlotte to warehouses in Raleigh before being redistributed to Charlotte’s ABC stores.

These new direct shipments, which began about two months ago, are helping get products to shelves faster. To achieve that, however, Mecklenburg County ABC CEO Keva Walton says it took some intense conversations with the North Carolina ABC Commission in Raleigh as he worked to convince them of the importance of restocking the city.

“In Charlotte, we have close to 1,000 mixed beverage accounts, and so really illustrating and articulating for them and demonstrating for them: we’re in high demand, we border a privatized state, so our market is a little different,” Walton says. “This is not saying we’re better or should receive greater priority than some of the boards who are struggling, but what happens in Charlotte and Mecklenburg is also a reflection on the state of North Carolina. We have the eighth busiest airport. We’ve got very high profile events and sports franchises. The financial services industry. All those things that make us an economic engine often lead right back to our hospitality, tourism and entertainment business.”

Walton hopes the positive reception of new direct shipments could pave the way for the city to receive it’s alcohol supply from suppliers instead of the Raleigh warehouse going forward.

When asked whether brands on backorder could be replaced with smaller brands until products are more readily available, as stores across the border in South Carolina are doing, Walton said the board is open to suggestions for brands to be carried, and pointed out that the size of the Mecklenburg County system makes it harder to purchase for than a single liquor store. Stores such as State Line and Southern Spirits have kept a solid selection of lesser-known products to make up for the shortages of old stand-bys.

The pandemic has exacerbated issues restaurants and bars — “mixed beverage” customers in ABC parlance — face in stocking their establishments, having to send staff to stores across the county to hobble together their complete alcohol orders. To help consolidate products, and thus pickups, the local ABC board is cutting down the number of locations that service mixed beverage customers. 

Operations director Alicia Collins says that change is meant to help alleviate the difficulty stores have completing orders due to the pandemic, but may continue even after the supply chain issues ease.

“With consolidating our mixed beverage services, and in utilizing the direct shipments, we’re actually able to push more liquor,” Collins says. “I have more product available at the mixed beverage locations that will service the county, and this will help the mixed beverage customer by them only having to make one stop.”

According to Walton, a lack of space and staff prevents the ABC Board from being able to have the appropriate product sent to a specific store as it is ordered for restaurants and bars to pick up.

There has long been tension between the hospitality business and the strict North Carolina ABC system regarding product selection, as many bartenders hold the belief that our cocktail scene will struggle to catch up to those in states where any product, no matter how obscure, is available without difficulty. In North Carolina, special products must be given a SKU and brought in through the ABC system to make their way behind a bar. 

That frustration has been escalating lately as bartenders push to strengthen Charlotte’s reputation in the national cocktail scene despite the restrictions of a controlled state. When the newest ABC store opened this summer, tensions flared as bartenders struggling to get product saw full shelves and cases of allocated products, such as rare bourbons, available to retail customers to celebrate the store’s opening. Bourbon lovers lined up at the store the night before opening to score bottles before returning to the line and getting another. Many of those bottles end up on the secondary market, being resold for a much higher value than the mandated retail price the bottles are purchased for in North Carolina. 

This year, Collins says the ABC Board will increase the allocation of these rare bottles at the end-of-the-year lottery to help restaurants and bars struggling due to the pandemic. Before Covid-19, about 36 percent of allocated whiskeys — which include Pappy Van Winkle and the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection — went to mixed beverage clients, and the rest to a retail lottery. Now, that number has shifted to a 50-50 split. 

“Some of the bars and restaurants are having a tough time right now, and we feel with the limited amount of product that we get in, allowing bars and restaurants to have more opportunity to secure these bottles will help them in the long run with their operations,” Collins says. “And at this point, we think it’s the right thing to do.”

Unpretentious People Say...

Other Articles You Might Enjoy