PROVIDENCE -- Lawmakers are considering relaxing one of the state's last remaining "blue laws" to make it easier for shoppers to pick up some spirits during the holidays.
A bill passed by the House and heard yesterday in a Senate committee would allow liquor stores to open on the two Sundays before Christmas and the Sunday between Christmas and New Year's Day. Currently, stores can only open on Sunday if that Sunday is Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve.
Massachusetts allows liquor stores to open any Sunday in towns along the border of New Hampshire, a state with year-round Sunday sales. Other liquor stores can open for six Sundays from Thanksgiving through Christmas. Connecticut lawmakers this year are debating whether to allow Sunday liquor sales year-round there.
Rep. Todd Brien, D-Woonsocket, said he was spurred to introduce the Rhode Island bill after seeing stores across the Massachusetts border doing holiday business when his hometown shops were closed.
"I'm obviously also looking to do it to generate revenue for the state of Rhode Island," he said.
Brien said if the change were approved, he would wait to see how stores fared. But he said he hoped it would be possible to expand the Sunday sales period in the future.
The only concerns raised to date about the change have come not from any religious group but from some store owners, said Brien and Frank Fede, head of the Rhode Island Liquor Store Owners Association.
"A lot of people may not want to be open seven days a week," Brien said. "You have a lot of mom-and-pop stores, so usually their Sundays are their only days off."
According to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, a trade group, Delaware and New York recently became the 25th and 26th states to allow year-round Sunday sales. New York requires stores that open on Sunday be closed a different day during the week.
David Wojnar, a lobbyist for the council, said the two arguments for the change are revenue and customer convenience.
"In this day and age when you've got people who are working, you've got a lot of people who work hard during the week and then don't have an opportunity to shop until the weekend," Wojnar said. He argues alcohol should be treated no differently "than any other consumer product" such as shoes.
According to the council, Sunday is the second most important shopping day for people age 35 to 54, and banning Sunday sales cuts out 7 percent of liquor sellers' customer base. Weekend shoppers are also more likely to buy on impulse, the organization says, citing an A.C. Nielsen study.
The Senate Committee on Constitutional and Gaming Issues took no vote on the matter yesterday. Chairwoman Maryellen Goodwin, D-Providence, suggested she was waiting for a Senate version of the bill to be introduced.
Liquor store owners are also pushing for a change in law that would allow them to conduct in-store wine and beer tastings, a practice now banned in the state.
Fede said store owners believe that although customers are drinking less, many are turning to higher-quality products. Giving them samples helps spur sales, he said.
"Usually we feel when people do taste something and like it, they generally do buy it," he said.
Massachusetts allows in-store tastings, while Connecticut allows tastings of new products, witnesses told the House Corporations Committee yesterday.
The Rhode Island bill contains a number of restrictions. No more than two types of wine and two types of beer can be offered. Customers can't double-dip. The store must provide free food to accompany the drinks. A store cannot promote the tastings in its outside advertising. And all samples must come from the store's inventory.
"If you give us the opportunity to do this, it starts to bring the liquor industry into the 21st century," Craig Power of Douglas Wine & Spirits told committee members.
The House committee passed the tastings bill, which was also sponsored by Brien. A similar measure is expected to come up for a vote in a Senate committee next week, said its sponsor, Sen. William Walaska, D-Warwick.
