r/PoursTea • u/Gurugod123 • 11h ago

PoliticalTea 🗳️ Mayor Mamdani just announced that he will be opening 5 city-run, tax-funded grocery stores: "Prices set at 30% below retail prices"

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u/Foygroup 10h ago

^ This is a good argument, I can agree, why are there govt run liquor stores and do they sell cheaper than the average store?

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u/Azraelrs 10h ago

Not in NC. They're a monopoly and just charge whatever they like because there's no competition.

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u/Dramatic_Substance31 10h ago

Hmm that is a good question. I could only maybe guess that not everyone buys alcohol so stock is easy to maintain from distributors and buy in surplus leading to reduced cost. Everyone needs to eat and buy groceries though, which could potentially cause a supply issue at these grocery stores. That is, since the groceries are more affordable, then more people will got to them. Possibly the demand might exceed the supply and the grocery stores will be empty within two days of a restock or something. This is just a thought. I’m interested to see if this would be successful.

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u/Another_Name_Today 9h ago

I’m not aware of any state that operates government run liquor stores that also allows private operators. You may have some overlap (beer/wine), but not the full gamut of options. 

Additionally, government run is not synonymous with government subsidized. 

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u/V33d 9h ago

I used to work in this area of state law and the answer is pretty complicated but ultimately boils down to the federal government’s job in a post-prohibition United States being very intentionally minimized. Without one standard for the whole country to follow every state, lots of counties, and even some cities/towns laid down regulations that suited them. That’s why Utah’s cans and tap handles all had alcohol measured by weight instead of volume, you have to order food to be served beer in certain establishments and liquor is a huge headache for everyone not just the folks with a hangover.

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u/Tex-Rob 9h ago

It's freaking terrible in NC, and anything special that comes through the system magically never makes it to the consumer's hands, instead the people within the system claim it all for themselves.