Plan to sell wine on grocery store shelves coming back to Vancouver council
CTV
Vancouver council is set to consider the next step in making it legal to stock wine on grocery store shelves, but only a tiny fraction of supermarkets will actually be able to offer this option to shoppers.
Vancouver council is set to consider the next step in making it legal to stock wine on grocery store shelves, but only a tiny fraction of supermarkets will actually be able to offer this option to shoppers.
In April, council voted unanimously in favour of a motion that would explore how to bring the "wine on shelf" option to the city's grocery stores, creating an option more convenient for retailers and shoppers than the "store-within-a-store" model. The goal, according to the motion, was in part to "increase consumer selection and convenience."
A report from city staff is recommending a change to the zoning and development bylaw that would allow stores with a provincially issued license to sell wine, cider, mead and sake off the shelf, something already being done in a small number of stores in cities like Langley, Surrey and Richmond.
However, the province is no longer issuing new "wine-on-shelf" licences to grocery stores, which means in order for a store to sell wine, one of the 33 already issued licences would have to be "relocated" to Vancouver.
"Based on feedback from existing licensees, staff anticipate some interest in relocating to Vancouver - but not a large uptake at this time," the report from staff says.
The province began allowing wine to be sold on shelves in 2015, but only in stores that are 10,000 square feet or larger. All of the provincial licenses, except one, have been issued to Save on Foods or Real Canadian Superstore. According to the staff report, there are a total of 39 grocery stores in the city that are both owned by these chains and large enough to qualify for a licence.
Because of this, staff is not recommending any municipal restrictions on where the sites can be. This is in contrast to the city's guidelines on liquor stores, which "establish where and how many liquor stores can be located in certain areas of the city, and their proximity to other liquor stores and to other places such as schools, parks and community centres," the staff report says.
