Suddenly, alcohol is very easy to find in Frontenac County

Jeff Green | Mar 04, 2020

If pressed, even Doug Ford would likely admit that it has turned out that running the Ontario government has turned out to be a bit more complicated than he indicated when he was running for premier.

Hallway medicine has not been eliminated. The teachers do not seem to be inclined to yield to his one percent raise edict, and reforming everything from municipal governance to public health, paramedic services and conservation authorities has proven to be a slower, and longer process than originally planned.

The much vaunted ‘buck a beer’ promise made during the 2017 election has fizzled, and the privatisation plan for cannabis sales has run into many difficulties.

But making it easier to buy alcohol in the province is being delivered. In Frontenac County and Addington Highlands, it has been done in spades.

By my count, over the last few months, 5 new alcohol outlets in the convenience store category have opened in the region, and at least one more, at Ormsbee’s Mercantile in Sunbury, will soon be opening. And a couple more are possible in the coming months. When you take into account the existing Beer Stores, LCBO corporate stores, and the two LCBO outlets that were already in place, the total is 14 locations at present, all but two of them (the beer stores in Sharbot Lake and Northbrook) with beer, wine, and hard liquor available.

Based on government statistics, there are over 1800 outlets in the province, to serve a population of 15 million people. Even including seasonal residents, there are 50,000 people living in South, Central and North Frontenac and Addington Highlands. That puts the alcohol purchasing opportunity in this region at over double the provincial average.

The theory that the consultants who handled the convenience store program were fixated only on distances in google maps, ignoring population information, seems to hold true.

There are a few implications to this increased opportunity to buy alcohol. For the retailers, it means there is less profit available. For those just getting into it, there is an investment to recover of course, but it will bump up sales and bring more people in who will also purchase other products. For the existing retailers, it will cut sales, perhaps dramatically.

For consumers there is added convenience, but not necessarily, added selection, and certainly not a break in price. That is because the government might have opened up the retailing of alcohol, but not the wholesale end. The LCBO still supplies all the product to every store, their own and everyone else’s and the retail price is set by them as well. That is how the province will maintain, and enhance, their profit in the alcohol sector.

New, smaller outlets will be bringing in the top selling products to maximise the value of limited shelf space, and will use the sales data provided by the LCBO to determine what sells best. This inevitably leads to the same or similar choices at the different outlets.

We should also never forget that alcohol is a drug, the most harmful drug, by most measures, in the world. Increasing the availability of alcohol does not necessarily result in increased abuse, but it is a very real concern.

Until very recently, the Ontario government has been carefully weighing the desire among many Ontarians for more convenient access to alcoholic beverages to take home, with concerns about excess consumption and addiction.

That this all changed, as exemplified by the fact that the number of outlets in our region has doubled over a three-month period.

It is great for some of our hardworking convenience store owners to be able to sell a profitable product, improve their bottom line, and employ more people. At the same time it will trim profits at the stores who were already in the alcohol business.

On one hand we get added convenience as consumers, on the other hand a potentially lethal product is more readily available It really is a mixed bag.

One of the positive outcomes that could come about in the medium term is improved access to craft beer, wine and spirits. This will not happen overnight, and will happen only in a limited manner in rural areas, but the possibility of privately owned stores specialising in small batch producers from the region, and across the province and beyond, may be closer now that the market has opened up.

In Quebec there are thriving stores that sell only the very best of Quebec beer and cider, hundreds of different beers from dozens of brewers from across the province. These stores have tasting rooms, experts on hand. They are a boon to the local industry and consumers alike. They treat beer and cider as specialty products to be savoured, not abused.

This could happen in Ontario as well, if the government focusses more on helping small Ontario producers reach a wider market.