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Health & Fitness

Keeping Local Liquor Store Owners from Feeling "Blue"

If it's Sunday and you need to buy beer, where will YOU go? Read on!

Greetings Waterford!  You may see my name here from time to time, largely and hopefully to enhance public awareness of a worthy cause, a healthcare topic, senior-related matters and/or community education.  Particularly when I write in support of a cause, it will be out of unsolicited personal interest.  For my “inaugural” blog, I wanted to give a plug for local business (knowing full-well I’m not the first to do so on this particular topic).


With the purchase of alcohol , it stands to reason that Connecticut merchants will see increased sales revenues, lose fewer sales to neighboring states and generate tax revenue for the state.  There have been plenty of articles so I won’t rehash them, except to ask: will privately-owned, stand-alone liquor stores be able to successfully offset their increased expenses?  Not without our help! I know there are other issues—family time, quality of life (when owners have to weigh the options of hiring more staff or working the hours themselves), but the solution should help both financially and socially.

Yes, it’s certainly convenient and tempting to grab a six-pack or two of party brew while food shopping and maybe it’s a dollar or two less there, maybe not.  I have no bone to pick with Stop & Shop or Big Y, I do all my food shopping between the two!  But I also know I’m not hurting their business if the only carbonated purchases I make belong to Poland Spring or Coke.

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One thing I’ve come to know over the past couple of years in Waterford is how much its residents like to support their community.  That said, it’s definitely worth making a second stop on the way home or a specific trip to , , Quaker Hill Package the or A&P (didn’t leave anyone out I hope); or neighboring spots like Gordon’s Yellowfront or Mermaid Liquors (I know there’s a bunch more…but you get the picture!).  Additionally, any questions you might have on different beers, wines, scotch, vodka — you name it, can commonly be answered by the expertise you'll typically find only at local, stand-alone liquor stores.

As a Waterford Rotarian, member of both the Eastern Connecticut and Greater Mystic Chambers of Commerce and a local business owner myself (four months into it), I find it to be no secret that great business has local roots—my first two client referrals came from Chamber relationships and my former business benefitted immeasurably.

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So that’s it then.  Unless my local liquor merchant starts carrying produce other than limes and stocks sirloin alongside the Smirnoff Ice in the walk-in, I’m buying local at “whatever the cost”—Cheers, Waterford!

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