Can you Imagine this happening months ago? (Drive-Up Liquor Stores)

A large liquor store nearby has seen an unusual number of customers. Even though they are considered by the governor an "essential service" and permitted to stay open, they opted to close the store and provide online orders only.

dobs108

Yesterday I stopped by a Bevmo and when approaching the door an employee poked his head through and said I could order online or by phone and then they would bring my order to the door for pickup. Nobody was allowed inside.

However the Total Wine and More just a couple of blocks away was allowing shoppers in the store, so that's where I did my shopping. Hardly anyone in there though, certainly less than 10 people, as a lot of folks are ordering online anyway.

Didn’t see it coming! But, things like this always takes us by surprise.

With all the Crazy Farm, Ranch things that increase Production, Antibiotics, Hormones and such. Increased Resistant bugs, increased cancers and other medical problems, but that's only the "Tip". The ease of travel and lack of restrictions allows the instant spread. Used to be you had to have Med Clearance and shots and Vaccines to travel and to get into our Country, even had preventive entry Quarantines. We now even let people in with known Deadly and easily spreadable infections. All that's left is to protect yourself with common sense.

The reason is political but we won't talk about that.

In lots of small towns they have been doing deliveries for years. In Louisiana, they have the drive through daiquiri shops. The law is interpreted as follows:

A daiquiri contained in a cup is legally permissible inside a moving vehicle, as long as the cup is sealed.

The legal definition of the term “sealed” in this context is:

- The lid is intact.
N- o straw is protruding from the cup, whether openly or through the lid.
- The cup’s contents have not been removed, either partially or fully.

When traveling through Montana or Wyoming (possibly both?) we saw drive up windows at a liquor store. It's been that way for a long time. We don't have drive up windows in California but do have liquor sales at gas stations and it's only illegal to sell alcohol between the hours of 2AM and 6AM. When we travel through states such as Utah it seems quite odd to us that many towns don't have anywhere to buy liquor and they have "beer" with very little alcohol in grocery stores and one can only get "hard beer" - real beer - in a state run liquor store.

I stopped at my go-to beverage store on Saturday and asked owner Shawn if his business has been affected by what's going on. He said he has been affected - in a very positive way. He said that the last week or so has been like Christmas season with customers coming and going all day. We Americans sure know how to cope.

Phil

IIRC NM has had drive-thru liquor stores for a long time. Not quite the same, here in CO we have appropriately named "Gas & Grass" stores.

when I was growing up, there was a drive thru liquor store which did quite well. The strangest one I ever encountered was in MIlwaukee, while attending an Irish Fest several years ago, they stop selling liquor and beer at 9:00 pm in stores. You can only get it in bars.

Traveling in the Kansas City, MO, late 1980s, I exited an interstate and my jaw dropped to see a combo liquor and ammo store with drive-thru service. What could go wrong? This was just a few miles from the Kansas border, a state with very strict liquor laws. No coincidence on the part of liquor stores in KC, MO, to do everything they could to encourage Kansans to cross the border to stock up.

Here on the Outer Banks today we have drive-thru beer and wine stores. You pull into an open garage (like a car wash), stay in your seat, and tell the clerk what to pull from the fridge: https://brewthru.com/
Beer and wine is more commonly sold in supermarkets and a few other retail storefronts here that don't have drive-thru lanes. But in NC, hard liquor can only be legally bought in state ABC stores. No drive-thrus yet, but they may be working on it.

Florida not only has drive up liquor stores, but also drive through liquor barn buildings where the staff can load cases of beer directly into your vehicle.

Yes we have. I've been here in Albuquerque, NM for 30 years and there is a particular location on upper Montgomery Blvd which was my most-used liquor store for something like ten of those years which had an often-used driveup window. It is long gone, and I think either the city or the state has had a regulation or law forbidding them for quite some time now.

Someone thought not having them would make drunk driving less likely. I doubt they based the decision on sound data.

that in PA drive through beer has been around since I moved here in 1999. I wasn't drinking back then I fell off the wagon around 2000 and actually glad I did.

seems to me when I was in Texas 35 years ago they had DRIVE THRU liquor stores. Basically a big garage like a fire house. Drive in/drive out.

It would be pretty helpful today considering what's going on...

Where I lived we can now get delivery.

When us kids were trying to ween our Mom off of alcohol we found the liquor stores delivered. Stopped that real quick.

It can be interesting how the liquor laws vary from place to place. Some places you buy from a state owned liquor store only. Other places it is a private business. In Minnesota, where I live, some cities have municipal liquor stores and a city next door might be privately owned liquor stores. The Total Wine effect has had some cities get out of the liquor sales business when they starting turning a loss instead of a profit! It is seems to happen most often when a Total Wine store opens in the general area!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alcohol_laws_of_the_Un...

said there was even a time (his days) when the milkman rang twice

If I remember right they had these drive thru in the 60. I was in El Paso in the Army and I think they were there then

Found it odd that liquor is on the same level as food.

Had a drive up window, Cop waited for you to pull out in the street, pulled you over, Ticket for Booze in Front Seat. Those were the "Good Ole Days".

The cop's brother-in-law probably owned the liquor store.

If you had a "White Wall" hair cut or Post Decal they would find a way to get into your pocket. Being Airborne and being required to have a shaved head made blending in impossible. Fort Campbell an Bragg were the same way.
Funny we've had the bullet Proof glass and some intercoms or screened voice slots here in some Package Stores and banks for years. Guess they knew COVID-19 was coming.

Sometime back probably around 1980's or 1990's there was a drive through liquor store just to the Northwest of Fort Worth.
It was a drive through, not a drive up. You would drive down the middle of the building and get your order then drive out the other end. We would laugh every time we drove by and say we bet someone coming to get their fill that already had a few might run through the building. Not sure if that ever happened because it was closed down fairly shortly after it opened.

I assume they'll have drive-through sobriety tests next.

Today I went to the joint that jabs me in the arms every two to four weeks to give me allergy shots.

I wondered if they'd be there, and whether they would be open tomorrow. Instead of having us all gather together in the waiting room, sharing our coughs and viruses, there was a hand-written easel sign in the parking lot saying something like "drive-through allergy shots". One of the nurses was waiting by a cart. She had me park in a designated spot, fill out a three item sign-in sheet (name, DOB, color of car), then went inside to fill my syringes and came back out to shoot me.

Why did I think they might close? Our ever-tightening rules here in NM as of March 27 forbid "elective" medical procedures, largely on the grounds of conserving scarce personal protective equipment for higher need. The opening examples were pretty severe, but, as with "essential" businesses, the exception list seems to be long and growing. The allergy clinic nurse was sure they'd still be operating tomorrow, but I'm not sure she would know.