If you are not from these parts – Ontario to be specific – you may be thinking, what the heck is a beer store and why should one exist? We have them. We really do. These stores are owned by a group of big brewers and for many years they had a lock on beer sales in Ontario. I heard on the radio the other day that the Province is not likely to renew its agreement with the beer store and has given them the required couple years notice. These things take time, and so it may actually be a few years before this dinosaur disappears.

I buy beer, but my idea of a major beer purchase is 4 or 5 cans, which I buy from the giant walk-in fridge in my local liquor store, a place which features a crazy selection of craft beer brands. I can’t help but notice, though, that more and more hyper-expensive beers are appearing there, many at over 5 bucks for a can. The other day I suggested to the cashier that I wanted to make a citizen’s arrest about the $5 beer. She suggested that perhaps that would be over-kill.

When I was a kid, there was a beer store plopped down beside a liquor store, not far from my dad’s little window factory. Across the street was a KFC, that seemed to pump out the fried chicken smell to entice shoppers from the beer store and the liquor store to cross the street for some greasy poultry.

The beer store and the liquor store were designed to be as unfriendly as possible. In the liquor store, you couldn’t actually see the booze, which was tucked away in the back. You had to fill out a slip with a little golf pencil and hand it to a sour looking little man who would go in the back and bring you out your bottle, sheathed in a paper bag. The Beer Store featured two lines, one for recycling and the other for buying, with a long conveyor on each side of the store. I haven’t ventured into a beer store in years but I doubt they have changed with the times.

I suspect the one thing that has allowed The Beer Store to continue it’s grip on the suds market as long as it has has everything to do with recycling. Not only do you have to bring your beer bottles and cans back there for get your deposit back, wine bottles have to go back there as well. When the beer store is dead, how will the province handle bottle and can recycling? They will have to figure out an alternative. Can grocery stores handle it? Would they want to. I don’t have the answer.