Home is where the wine is. At least, that’s how it used to be.

Introduced in 2022, Proposition 125 was passed by a narrow margin Nov. 8 and took effect March 1, 2023.  

The impact was almost immediate: Any retailer with a license to sell beer for off-premise consumption now had permission to sell wine (including cider and sake), and soon the bottles began filling the shelves of commercial grocery and convenience stores. Larger retail stores in Colorado like Walmart and Target have also started selling wine within the last 10 months. 

---

---

According to election data compiled by the Denver Post, approximately 50.6% of voters elected to pass the proposition to expand alcohol licenses, while 49.4% voted no. This translates to a difference of about 28,211 voters. 

Garfield County, however, was one of 47 counties to vote against the proposition. 

---

---

“It was overwhelmingly defeated on the Western Slope, and I think that the smaller communities here tend to support small businesses versus conglomerates,” New Castle Liquors owner Mandy Gauldin said. 

Nearly 55% of Garfield County voters were against the proposition, or about 12,915 voters. Despite more counties voting no, however, larger counties like Denver who voted yes carried more weight in the election. 

While this change in liquor laws may offer more convenience for customers looking to purchase a bottle of wine along with their weekly groceries, local businesses have seen — and felt — the ugly side of the coin. 

One store in Glenwood Springs to take a hit from the new law is Roaring Fork Wine and Liquors. 

Owned and run by John Kim for the past eight years, the loss of business has led to several changes in sales, staff and revenue. 

Wine has always been the store’s best-selling section, trumping beer and soft drink sales. In total, wine makes up as much as 50% of Roaring Fork Wine and Liquors’ yearly sales, according to Kim. 

That number has been reduced to 20% since the state expanded the permissions included in alcohol licenses. 

“At least about 30% of total revenue is down,” Kim said. “That’s a lot of money.” 

Kim explained that December is always their busiest season in terms of wine sales. During December 2023, however, the store made 50% less wine sales than in December 2022. 

“To survive in the business, we’ve had to cut out our expenses,” Kim said. “Like cut down the (number of) employees, which is one of the biggest expenses.” 

Prior to March 1, the liquor store boasted an impressive eight full-time employees. Now, they operate with one part-time and two full-time employees, one of them being the store’s manager, Miriam Espino. 

“This is one of the biggest liquor stores in the whole county,” Kim said. “If I suffered a loss of sales, the smaller stores may have gotten hit harder. They can’t reduce their employees anymore.” 

In addition to reduced staffing, Kim said the business has also needed to winnow its selection of wines. 

“Our purchase of wines, inventories of wines got reduced,” he said. “We usually carry about $200,000- to $250,000-worth of wine, so now we’ve reduced it to less than $100,000.” 

It’s not just local businesses that are struggling with the changes, but also the overall community. 

The expansion in alcohol license permissions didn’t necessarily create new jobs in stores adding wines to their stock, and the money made by these larger chain stores doesn’t stay in the community or contribute to the employee market in the same way that local businesses do. 

“The money that I can contribute to this community is reduced because my profit is reduced,” Kim said. 

Risk of local store closures

Trends from other states with similar liquor laws suggest that — in the next several years following the change in Colorado’s liquor laws — Colorado could see a loss of 60% of its liquor stores, according to Colorado Hard Money Lender. 

The number was drawn using Georgia as a baseline, where beer and wine are also available in grocery stores (but not hard liquors, similar to Colorado). 

Despite having double the population of Colorado, Georgia has less liquor stores than Colorado. As retailers adapt to the transition in liquor laws, Colorado Hard Money Lender predicts that close to 1,200 Colorado liquor stores will close over the next several years, erasing thousands of jobs from the local economy.

This financial burden has already caught up with multiple stores.

Bottle Shop 33, voted Denver’s Best Liquor Store in 2023, announced in February that they were shutting down their business, according to a Westword article. Colorado’s liquor laws played a role in that decision. 

Kevin and Sharon Brady fear Glenwood stores could be next, especially if liquor laws change in the future to allow grocery stores to sell hard liquor.

“After the wine precedent, we’re naturally concerned hard liquor will be next,” they said. 

Kevin and Sharon opened Cooper Wine & Spirits in Glenwood in 2013. As a result of the change to Colorado’s liquor laws, they’ve also reduced their staff size by one full-time position (leaving five employees plus the owners). Kevin Brady said he and his wife have increased their own work hours, and reduced business hours during the winter. 

“We were concerned about how the grocery store wine business was going to impact us, and it was a wise move,” Sharon Brady said. 

From 2022 to 2023, their store’s wine sales, which have proven to be their most popular product, decreased by 23.7% between March and December. Beer sales fell by 1% in the same period. 

“If they’re buying wine in the grocery store, why (are they) going to make a special trip to Kevin’s store for beer?” Kevin Brady said. 

Kevin Brady spent 23 years as a wine and spirit wholesaler between Nebraska and Georgia before opening his own liquor store. He then took that experience and used it to curate a specialized selection of wine and spirits, often organic or biodynamic, which he describes as “non-grocery store wines.” 

“We suspected that one day grocery stores would sell wine,” he said. “We have curated a selection of wines that come from small businesses, family-owned wineries, including as many family-owned distilleries as we could find.” 

For Kevin and Sharon, the key to attracting business amidst all the changes in their industry was to educate their consumers, which they continue to do through wine tastings on Friday and Saturdays. 

“We also knew that, if we’re going to go down this path … we have to somehow educate our consumers,” Kevin Brady said. “We’re showing them wines that they’ve never seen before … We don’t just ask you, ‘What are you looking for?’ We’ll ask you, ‘What are you having for dinner tonight?'” 

Unlike Glenwood Springs and New Castle, City Market in Carbondale was denied a license to sell beer or wine because of its proximity to Colorado Rocky Mountain High School.  

While this wouldn’t stop other convenience stores (that meet the distance requirement) from selling the same products, it somewhat removes the element of convenience for people who would otherwise grab their wine at City Market. Instead, some of those sales still go to liquor stores. 

“If they sold wine and beer, it would have some effect on the liquor stores,” Carbondale Town Manager Lauren Gister said. “Particularly for people (like) a mom who’s dragging around two little kids who are impatient with shopping. She can buy a bottle of wine while she buys her groceries instead of having to make yet another stop with the kids.” 

Separate from the fear of mass closure of local liquor stores is the fear of decrease in wine distribution points in Colorado. As more liquor stores close, it’ll be less convenient for smaller wine producers to ship their wines to Colorado, knowing there won’t be as much business. Once it’s no longer financially beneficial for them to ship wines to their regular distribution points, towns in Colorado may see their wine selections begin to shrink. 

“You’re basically now just shopping the same stuff, over and over and over,” Kevin Brady said. 

How liquor stores are fighting back

For both Roaring Fork Wine and Liquors and Coopers Wine & Spirits, competing with the volume-driven prices of grocery stores in an industry that’s often price-driven by quantity poses a significant challenge. Kevin Brady said one of his store’s solutions to this challenge has been making larger investments into liquor to bring down the price of wine, since they have less competition for hard liquors.

The store has also been offering 20% discounts for 12-bottle cases where customers can mix-and-match wine and spirits. 

“We bring our customers the best selection of prices for wine, and the best prices and selection for liquor as well,” Kevin Brady said. 

Another liquor store to capitalize on the growing popularity of less traditional drinks is New Castle Liquors. Gauldin said that though wine sales may be down for them too, they have much more that they offer. 

“We have substantially increased our selection of tequilas, whiskeys, gins, rums and ready-to-drink cocktails,” Gauldin said. “The low- and no-alcohol drinks category is actually the fastest growing, and we have a great and growing assortment of non-alcoholic beers, wines, spirits and mocktails.” 

For Kim at Roaring Fork Wine and Liquors, receiving support from local buyers isn’t possible without supporting them first. 

Were local liquor stores to go out of business, that would also put local wine producers from throughout the Western Slope at risk who typically wouldn’t get picked up by large grocery chains. 

“Whenever a new player is coming into the industry … from nearby areas, then I give them a chance to have a display,” Kim said. “That’s my priority.” 

“The local guys are my neighbors, my church members, and they proudly present their new products to me,” Kim continued. “I want to try it. I want to give them a chance.” 

Kim explained that local support works in a loop — you support customers and local venders, and they’ll return the support. 

“There are customers always coming to me and asking for … certain wines they bought in other places … They show me the label and asked me if I can get it for them,” Kim said. “I try hard, and almost every time I get it for them.” 

Gauldin said that, sometimes, the employees themselves are enough to bring people into the store. 

“We have customers come in to talk to us or our employees, when they’re not even buying anything,” Gauldin said. “They’re just stopping to visit, or they’ll stop and bring us food … There’s a lot of laughter in our store.” 

Gauldin isn’t alone in her sentiments. Cooper Wine & Spirits has also seen how outstanding customer service can translate into a kind of trust from their clients that is unique to small and family-run businesses. 

“During COVID … we weren’t letting people in, but people wanted cases of wine,” Sharon Brady said. “They began to trust our selection for them … They will come in and say, ‘Can you just mix the case for me?’ Because they trust that we understand their palette and their preferences.”