AURORA | Calling themselves Coloradans for Convenience, a group of convenience store owners said Thursday, May 5, they’ll move in front of a compromise effort at the state legislature and begin collecting signatures for a statewide ballot measure allowing grocery and convenience stores to sell full-strength beer.
The backers of Prop. 115 join organizers for Your Choice Colorado — who are proposing the similarly themed Prop. 104 — in hitting the streets for petition signatures. The signature gathering is underway even while state lawmakers try to fashion a last-minute proposal themselves that would allow for full-strength beer and wine to be sold in grocery stores, yet somehow provide accommodations to existing liquor stores.
Fearing that convenience stores could be left out of the lucrative full-strength beer market in Colorado, Prop. 115 could be an end-run around changes pondered by state lawmakers, as well as competing measures that could add the beer sales only to grocery stores.
“Although there are other initiatives addressing this issue, we believe that our proposed initiative is the simplest, fairest way for Coloradans to have the convenience of buying full-strength beer in stores that are already part of their daily routine,” said group spokesman Charlie Brown, a former Denver city councilman.
State lawmakers say they’re still certain they can find a compromise answer in the legislature, possibly Friday.
“We’re very close to an agreement to settle this in the legislature and no one goes to the ballot,” said Denver state Sen. Pat Steadman, who’s leading the compromise effort.
The issue has been brewing for years as more and more people move to Colorado from states where they’ve become accustomed to the convenience of buying beer and wine with groceries. Grocery store chains and others have moved ahead with the idea despite push-back from many legislators, liquor store owners and craft brewers. That industry has created a group to fight grocery store sales, saying it would indirectly hurt the growth and diversity of craft beer in Colorado.
That group has been amassing a war chest in anticipation of having to persuade voters to kill the measures in the 2016 general election.
“We are focused on the November ballot and ensuring that we protect our local biz and our Colorado craft breweries,” said Jennie Peek-Dunstone, a spokeswoman for Keep Colorado Local.
The fight over who can sell retail alcohol is not a new one at the state Capitol. Lawmakers have tried and failed several times in recent years to craft rules that would allow grocers to sell full-strength beer and wine. Under the current rules, liquor licenses are limited to just one per business, which means chains can’t sell at more than one store and liquor stores are limited to one storefront.
Grocery stores are allowed to sell the lower-alcohol, 3.2-percent beer at their other locations, another quirk Colorado shares with just a few states.
Besides Prop. 115, another proposition would allow sales of full-strength beer, wine and liquor. Prop. 115 would only remove the 3.2-percent limit for beer sales in grocery and convenience stores.
PROP. 115 BALLOT LANGUAGE
Shall there be a change to the Colorado Revised Statutes to repeal the alcohol content limitation in the definition of fermented malt beverage, commonly known as 3.2% beer, to allow businesses licensed under Colorado law to manufacture, distribute, or sell malt beverages that contain more than 3.2%alcohol by weight or 4% alcohol by volume, including products commonly known as full-strength beer?