LCBO kiosks may be coming to Toronto grocery stores

Here’s half-measure number two in the Liberal government’s multi-part strategy to placate Ontarians calling for corner-store booze sales across the province. (Number one, you may recall, was a promise to install LCBO booths at some farmers’ markets.) Earlier today, Ontario finance minister Charles Sousa announced a plan to install ten LCBO Express kiosks in Ontario grocery stores as part of a year-long pilot program. The province is asking any supermarkets with 2,000 extra square feet of retail space to apply for the privilege of hosting the Ontario liquor seller in their stores, with hopes that the booze stands will be up and running by the end of 2014. We won’t know until later this year whether any of the kiosks are coming to Toronto. Either way, we suspect that a few extra-glamourous VQA-style shops may be insufficient to mollify the pro-privatization masses.
This would be a great decision if it was 1950. But it isn’t. give it up, LCBO. You’ll make more money by opening the market up. Studies prove that’s what will happen.
It’s great that we still don’t have a way to buy a bottle of wine for a 8 pm dinner at a friend’s house on a Sunday night. Laughable.
By the way, anyone ever stop to ask how the LCBO chooses what alcohol’s for sale at grocery stores? Answer: payola.
Why don’t you go the way of Quebec and open up the market? Why does this LCBO have everybody by the balls? I thought this was a democratic society. I can’t understand this control LCBO has over everybody. Are they selling some sort of mind controlling drug in their wine and beer?
How about they support the wine industry here in Ontario like they do in Australia, New Zealand, France, Chile, US, Italy, Austria, Hungary, etc etc etc and allow local wines to be sold in grocery stores vs a “kiosk”.
Oh wait BRITISH COLUMBIA is doing this by 2015…… #WhyAreWeBackwards http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/liquor-to-be-sold-in-some-bc-grocery-stores-starting-next-winter/article17354744/