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City council ponders Sunday liquor sales

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Written by Jesse Trimble

Wednesday, 28 October 2009 08:00

Discussion among city council members last week turned to the possibility of Sunday liquor sales.

A Midwest Miller Light employee takes inventory at The Liquor Depot, 1006 S. Metcalf St. With the city council debating on bringing Sunday liquor sales to the city, local liquor stores are prepared for either decision. Larry Harrell, owner of The Liquor Depot, does not support a decision to have Sunday liquor sales because he said he believes it won’t generate enough money to keep his store open for the extra day. (photo by Jesse Trimble)

Although the council has yet to make a concrete decision on the issue, Jeff Cantrell, city administrator, said it was favored by the majority of the council.

“We’ve been getting requests from several merchants in town,” Cantrell said. He also mentioned Louisburg has a disadvantage because it is so close to other cities that if people want to drive to Missouri on Sundays to purchase liquor then they could.

“It’s an effort to recapture a lost market share,” Cantrell said.

Cantrell said he also thought Sunday liquor sales would bolster retail sales in the current down economy.

“I favor the idea based on its ability to increase revenue and local traffic,” Cantrell said. “We need to take every advantage that we can for local sales.”
Cantrell said the council will take action on the decision within the next 62 days before the ordinance would become effective.
But one local liquor store owner doesn’t agree with Sunday liquor sales.

Larry Harrell, owner of The Liquor Depot, 1006 S. Metcalf St., said he doesn’t support the idea because not enough money will be generated from the sales for him to pay his employees to have the store open. Plus, he said he doesn’t want to work seven days every week.

“Even though I’m not here all the time, I don’t want to have to worry about someone calling me and telling me the printer broke or a cooler isn’t working,” Harrell said.

Harrell did some quick math based on a hypothetical situation if a Sunday liquor motion was passed.

He said if his store was open from noon to six p.m. on Sundays, he would have to sell 30 cases of 30 pack beer just to break even to pay employees, which would be $60 at $10 an hour. If 30 cases of 30 pack beer were sold, he said it would result in $675 in volume and he’d collect $54 in taxes, at 8 percent. He added that he didn’t know how much the state would kick back to the city. If taxes were at 2 percent, the city would make $1.08 on a bad sales day. For a good day, Harrell said, the city might make about $5 or $6 from his store. If the two other liquor stores happened to have a good sales day, too, that would be a total of around $24 to the city, which doesn’t include Price Chopper.

Cantrell said Price Chopper was the biggest component in the scenario. He said he’d spoken with the manager who claimed the Sunday sales would be a big impact. However, Price Chopper only sells beer with 3.2 percent alcohol content, while liquor stores can sell beer that has 5 percent.

Harrell said he contacted Alcoholic Beverage Control, or ABC, through Kansas’ department of revenue last week to inquire about how much money the city would earn from Sunday liquor sales. He has not received a response yet.

“I didn’t think the fate of my business would be controlled by the city council,” Harrell said.

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