Manitoba full of quirky small-town liquor outlets

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This article was published 01/11/2014 (4248 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SANFORD — “Booze and Screws” is a slogan idea Andrea Morann rejected when she put out a flyer for her store, Sanford Lumber, which sells liquor in addition to plywood.

OK, what about “Two-fours and Two-by-fours?” Or may we recommend “Boards and Bordeaux?” How about “Nails and Ales?”

Sanford Lumber and Building Supplies is one of 171 small rural outlets licensed to sell liquor in Manitoba. Where there is no Manitoba Liquor Mart nearby, the province licenses small rural shops to sell on its behalf, from Lynn Lake to Emerson, from Russell to Falcon Lake.

Most rural liquor vendors in small towns are convenience stores or pharmacies. There are also some quirky outlets across the province, such as liquor sales out of lumber yards in Sanford and Falcon Lake.

In Waskada, you can go to Griffith Agencies to buy your insurance, then drink a stiff one when you find out what it costs.

Well, not inside the brokerage. Insurance broker owner Gary Williams, who is the reeve of rural municipality Brenda-Waskada, has a strict policy against mixing booze and business. The liquor store at his brokerage is more a service to the community, he said, than a heavily promoted Happy Harry’s of the oil patch, the beverage shop many Manitobans frequent when in North Dakota.

His insurance office has certainly had more traffic in recent years, and not for insurance, with the influx of workers for southwestern Manitoba’s oil boom. Griffith Agencies, before Williams owned it, bought the town’s closed pharmacy in 1980 and retained the liquor license, but never reopened the pharmacy.

People who compare paying tax-heavy liquor prices to being taken to the cleaners, have never been to Altona. There, the liquor outlet is inside the dry cleaning shop, Altona Cleaners and Beyond.

Owner Donna Rosling-Wolters said she stole the “beyond” in her company name from Free Press wine columnist Ben MacPhee-Sigurdson, who will often say a wine is available at “Liquor Marts and beyond.” “Well, we’re ‘beyond.’ You don’t get much more ‘beyond’ than us,” she said.

Her store has one of the largest selections of any small rural liquor vendor in Manitoba, with more than a thousand items. It even stocks brand name Dirty Laundry wines from British Columbia. “It’s a no-brainer,” laughed Rosling-Wolters.

The liquor store used to be in Altona’s pharmacy, but the owner wanted to give it up. That was about 20 years ago. There were no takers — it was still somewhat frowned upon then in the predominantly Mennonite town — so the dry cleaners, owned by someone else at the time, assumed the licence. Rosling-Wolters has owned the shop for the past nine years.

“It’s huge,” said Gary Desrosiers, about the revenue the little liquor shops earn for small outlets like his Brunkild Grocery in Brunkild, about 20 minutes southwest of Winnipeg.

“The only reason we (he and wife Carrie) bought the store is because it has a liquor vendor licence. Between alcohol and tobacco, that’s over 50 per cent of your sales.”

Candace Narth in Vita said her flower shop, Sumthing Special Florist & Gift Shop, wouldn’t exist without the liquor vendor licence. “It’s pretty much the main store item, that and tobacco.” She also recently started selling lawn mowers and other yard-care equipment.

“You have to wear a lot of different hats in a small town,” explained Morann, of Sanford Lumber. She couldn’t run the lumber yard without liquor sales either, in the town of about 800, 15 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg. “Lumber sales pretty much peter out in winter, but the liquor sales are steady,” she said. She also runs a Sears catalogue depot.

Many resorts, such as Nutimik Lodge in the Whiteshell Provincial Park, also have liquor vendor licences, but only one clothing store has one, that being LPK Enterprises in Rossburn, in the Parkland.

The province has had a distance policy in place for liquor vendors since 1982. Within 30 km of Winnipeg, liquor vendors must be at least 10 km apart. Beyond 30 km from the perimeter, they must be at least 20 km apart.

» Winnipeg Free Press