Liquor sales in Kansas and U.S. skyrocket during pandemic

Across Kansas and the country, liquor sales have been a winner in an economy crippled by COVID-19.

“5 o’clock came really early every day for everyone since March,” said Brian Davis, who owns one of the five Davis Liquor Outlets around Wichita. The others are owned by his family.

From March to June, every day was like Christmas time liquor sales at the family’s business. The flood started to recede but then football season caused sales to climb back above normal numbers.

The extra business so far in 2020 has meant two or three additional hires at each location, which is about a 33% increase in employees.

Bar shutdowns also fueled sales.

“And this isn’t just what I saw,” the 47-year-old said. “You know from friends in the business, everyone was seeing the same thing.”

The spike in at-home drinking has also caused shortages of certain types of liquor, such as those made in Mexico.

Liquor sales at stores are up 22.7% nationwide from March 1 through roughly mid-September compared to the same time the prior year, according to the data-organization Nielsen. The organization reported that the third week of March hit a weekly high of 53.3% compared to the year before.

For a pre-pandemic perspective, liquor sales at stores were up 3.6% from a year-over-year comparison through February, the organization said.

The state of Kansas has also felt benefits of the surge.

Tax collections on liquor sales at stores are up 17.9% from July to September of this fiscal year compared to last, Kansas Department of Revenue data shows.

“Obviously liquor enforcement is up double digits, that’s a pretty impressive increase,” said KDOR Director of Taxation Steve Stotts.

Liquor sales at stores are one of the 10 taxes on goods in a monthly report by the KDOR. Besides liquor sales, there are two other categories up double digits from the same time last year: liquor gallonage, which is wholesalers of liquor and beer to liquor stores, and a tax on Internet sales.

Taxes on drinks at the bars are one of the five categories in the negative from the same time last year.

“Which tells you bars are limited on capacity and maybe some of them are still closed,” Stotts said. “So instead of going to the bar and buying their drink, they’re going to the liquor store and taking it home with them.”

Historical data goes back to 2001 and shows the tax on liquor store sales of alcohol generally increases each year.

At-home drinking causes shortages

The national boom of drinking from cans, instead of items on tap, has caused a bottleneck for can production. It’s impacted “skinny cans,” Davis said, like the ones used by White Claw, Truly and Michelob Ultra. Budweiser, he said, stopped making 8-pack of 16-ounce cans.

“It was an in-between package for the guy who wants 12 cans or wants a six-pack and they just aren’t making those right now,” Davis said.

Other products are nearly unavailable.

Mexico saw its wave of COVID-19 cases come after other countries and lagged behind others in restarting production, he said.

The family-owned Davis stores have about 2% of the liquor products they need from Mexico.

“There’s no Corona on the shelf. No Dos Equis. No Victoria. We are getting very, very limited supplies of those,” Davis said. “It’s just kind of dumbfounding for me. Doing this for (25) years, you never want to be out of stuff on the shelf and you’re walking through your store you go, ‘man there’s four or five cooler doors that have no product in them because we can’t get em.”’