State Store Union Wants To Ruin FroGro Wine Vending. Dumb.
September 30, 2010 at 6:19 pm
Somebody tell the Independent State Store Union to lay off our shiny new wine machines.
The Harrisburg-based union of state liquor store managers took to the Centre Daily Times to bitch about how the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board is The Man and FroGro's upcoming kiosks "underscore the hypocrisy of the PLCB's underage drinking prevention program."
Sounds like someone's jealous that wine machines are so awesome. I'm sure that if the ISSU had the opportunity to install them, they'd be all over that too. Unless they're too busy protesting Sunday liquor sales or fighting PLCB in court all the time.
Check out their grievances (and why they're nonsense) after the jump.
Here's how they open their little protest:
HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 28 — /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Independent State Store Union sent to each member of the legislature yesterday a letter charging that the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board placement of a wine vending machine in a supermarket servicing the University of Pennsylvania campus only underscores the hypocrisy of the PLCB's underage drinking prevention program. The union chides the PLCB on whether they intend to extend the amenity to every college campus in Pennsylvania. The union claims the PLCB and industry are one.Let's get this straight. The ISSU harassed every member of the PA State Legislature because FroGro's selling wine in an area full of not only 21-year-old-plus Penn students, but also local West Philadelphians. And then they "chide" the PLCB, like they're parents or something.The wine vending machine information was headlined in the September 22nd edition of the University of Pennsylvania's newspaper The Daily Pennsylvanian.
Dear Representative Casorio:*Penn and West Philadelphia community.As reported by The Daily Pennsylvanian, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board has announced they are placing a wine vending machine for use by students over the age of twenty-one in the Fresh Grocer supermarket that serves the University of Pennsylvania community.
Published on the same day in the school newspaper is an article noting that Penn is the 16th most dangerous campus in the country. Are we to assume the alcohol beverage industry represented by the PLCB will make the campus safer with the addition of a wine vending machine?Is that the Pennsylvania Liquor Control's Board's job, to make campus safer? Because we were under the impression it was to control liquor. Which a vending machine does. And even if it was their job to fight crime, we highly doubt it's the wine machine that will push us over the edge in rapes, murders, and aggravated assaults. PS, we're 17th. Give us street cred where it's due.
The day before Fresh Grocer received a permit to obtain a wine vending machine, the PLCB issued a press release touting the nearly $1 million in grant money it awarded to local communities and college/university campuses to fight underage and dangerous drinking among Pennsylvania's youth. The placement of a wine vending machine at the University of Penn's Fresh Grocer makes a cynical joke of the PLCB/industry hypocritical alcohol education/prevention programs.A major initiative from that funding is the character "L.C. the Bee" who teaches children not to drink. We have yet to see human-sized bees in FroGro getting pressured to slap the bag; if we do, you'll win this round, ISSU.
It's not like the wine machines will be dancing around Pied-Pipering our city's youth on a journey of underage debacuhery. It's run like any other PLCB-licensed store, with rules and stuff. And just like any other PLCB establishment, to the best of our knowledge it won't make "cynical jokes." That's what UTB is for.
Will the students at Penn State and Pitt Universities, in addition to all the statewide community colleges, be offered the same campus amenity of their own wine vending machine?No, because Penn State and Pitt suck more than we do and don't have FroGros. And you're probably the ones selling to kids over there, Independent State Stores. You're worried that the PLCB-- or, as you call it, the "industry"-- has one-upped you in this particular market. Shut up and leave our vending machine alone.