Liquor and Food Primaries can now purchase liquor at wholesale price
Dear ABLE BC members and industry colleagues,
The day is finally here.
Today, for the first time in our industry’s history, British Columbia’s Liquor Primaries and Food Primaries can purchase liquor at wholesale price. Although your savings will vary from product-to-product, we expect on average this will lead to a 20 per cent reduction in your liquor purchase costs – and as much as five per cent to your bottom line.
Hospitality customers who have registered with the LDB can now use a searchable hospitality price list to help with their buying decisions. A complete online hospitality product catalogue will launch September 1, 2020.
If you haven’t registered for the Hospitality Product Catalogue, learn more and register here.
Hospitality pricing will remain in effect until March 31, 2021, at which time the program will be reviewed by government.
It’s been a long road to this moment, and frankly it could not have come at a better time. With up to two-thirds of BC’s hospitality industry still not out of the red – and about half still worried they won’t be able to pay bills over the next couple of months – this single policy change will help many operators on their path back to profitability.
Although ABLE BC has been seeking hospitality pricing since wholesale pricing for liquor retailers was introduced in 2015, this policy change comes as a direct result of ongoing advocacy efforts by ABLE BC and the Business Technical Advisory Panel (BTAP).
ABLE BC has been proud to work alongside the BCRFA, BC Craft Brewers Guild, and others as part of BTAP, which was been advising the Attorney General on liquor policy reforms since 2018 and throughout this COVID crisis.
We deeply appreciate how hard the Attorney General worked personally to make hospitality pricing happen. Many politicians of different governments have talked about this change for years, and they all agreed it needed to be done. But Minister Eby put this on his back and got it over the line.
Our industry is immensely grateful to him and his team for being our industry’s champion when we need in most.
As a show of appreciation, ABLE BC is asking all members to reach out directly to the Attorney General to let him know how hospitality pricing will benefit your business. You may reach him at AG.Minister@gov.bc.ca.
If you have any other questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me: jeff@ablebc.ca.
-Jeff Guignard, Executive Director