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Most cities will observe no impact from competition if Wine With Dinner is allowed because they do not have municipal liquor operations. Data from the 2005 State Auditor’s report shows, only 221 cities operated municipally-owned liquor stores, meaning fewer than 1 in 5 Minnesotans have municipal liquor stores in their communities.
For cities with municipal liquor stores, wine sales are a fairly small portion of overall municipal liquor sales compared to hard liquor and beer. Even with competition for wine sales from grocery stores, municipal liquor stores should be as profitable as private stores in states like Wisconsin and Florida, which allow wine sales in grocery stores yet have thriving private liquor stores.
If your city has no municipal liquor stores, is not large enough to support grocery stores of 8,000 square feet or more, or did not make any income from municipal liquor operations in 2005, Wine With Dinner would not impact your city's budget.
Locate your city below to find out how Wine With Dinner would impact your city's revenue based on 2005 data from the State Auditor's Office.
- 49 cities actually lost money on their liquor operations in 2005. This means property taxpayers are subsidizing liquor stores.
- The Wine With Dinner proposal only includes stores with at least 8,000 square feet. So in the 124 cities with fewer than 1,500 people, it is unlikely that a grocery store is large enough to sell wine.
- On average, cities only received 91 cents of every dollar of municipal liquor profits in 2005. In recent years, that transfer rate has been as low as 69 percent.
- In 132 cities, a significant portion of the revenue comes from on-sale liquor operations, which are not affected by Wine With Dinner. Competition with private bars and restaurants seems to serve cities well.
- According to the Office of the Legislative Auditor, wine costs consumers 3% to 8% more in municipally-owned liquor stores than in private stores.
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Minnesota Grocers Association