Grocers Reluctant to Take On Bottle and Can Returns

Jeff Green | Jul 17, 2024

A few week's ago Gordon Dean was decidedly upbeat about the prospect of selling beer and wine in his Mike Dean's Local Grocer stores in Chesterville, Bourget and Sharbot Lake.

He had been one of the independent grocers on a panel that was being consulted about the proposed changes.

“Not only will this be good for grocery and convenience store owners, it is very positive for rural communities, which have suffered declines for years while successive governments have brought in policies that favour large urban areas,” he said, in an interview with the News in early June.

However, he said at the time that you never know exactly what is going to happen until the details are revealed when the regulations are released.

That hesitation on his part was eventually borne out. When the rules for beer and wine sales in grocery and convenience stores were formally released, there was a difference. Both categories of store will be able to sell beer, cider, wine, and ready to drink alcoholic beverage, but unlike Convenience Stores, grocery stores will be required to accept empty cans and bottles as well.

This detail was a game changer for Gordon Dean.

“There is no way, as a seller of fresh food, that we can accept dirty bottles and cans in our stores. I can't have a cashier handling a dirty bottle and then scanning a Granny Smith apple” he said. “We don't have space in our Sharbot Lake store for a separated out recycling station. It is not something that we can do, and we are not alone.”

Under the new rules, 2,000 grocery stores in Ontario will be eligible to sell alcoholic beverages as of October, and of those only 37 have submitted applications and received approval thus far. This stands in stark contrast to Convenience Stores, where 2,000 licenses have already been issued out of the 5,000 stores that are eligible to apply.

Gordon Dean remains optimistic that the regulation requiring grocery stores to take bottle and cans back will be altered, hopefully before October.

“The LCBO or the large grocery chains such as Loblaws, Sobeys and Walmart are all exempt from the requirement to take back empties, and we are hoping that the government will change course on this where the grocery stores who are not yet eligible are concerned. There is a lot of movement in this area right now,” he said.

Mike Deans Local Grocer operates two stores in Quebec, and those stores sell beer and wine and take back empties, but he said that the way it works in Quebec is different than Ontario.

There are special bags, which must be filled and sealed by the customers, for cans. And bottles mut be returned in full cardboard boxes as well. So it is easy for us to handle the bottle and cans in Quebec, Dean said.

“Quebec has done a good job making this work. I'm hoping that Ontario will set up a reasonable system as well,” he said.

The potential to sell alcohol is something Gordon Dean has studied for years.

“Research has shown that while the profit margin is small, there is a major benefit in terms of traffic in the store, and that is the main benefit. An increase of 10% traffic in a rural grocery store is a big opportunity to sell more groceries, and that is what we are after in our sector,” he said.

Other grocers in the region, have not opted to take advantage of the new opportunity to sell alcoholic beverage. The Northbrook and Sydenham Foodland stores have not registered.

While these grocers have not applied for a permit to sell alcoholic beverages, a couple of other stores in Frontenac County have.

In Sydenham, Sydenham Convenience and Cafe will start selling beer, wine, cider and ready mix drinks in September, as will the Centex gas station in Harrowsmith. Sharbot Lake Petro-Canada and General Store is registered as a grocery store and will be selling beer, wine, ready-mix drinks and large-pack sizes as of October. They will also be receiving empties.

A number of other convenience stores, including C4 Convenience in Arden, have not opted in.

Barb Matson, owner of C4 Convenience, said back in June that at that point she had not had time to think about whether it would be a good idea for her store or not, but that her instinct was to “keep doing what we've been doing for now.”

The requirement to make sure there is a staff member at the cash, space issues and the potential conflict if someone who is already intoxicated wants to buy alcohol were concerns for her.

“I]m not saying we will never do it,” she said, “but it is not something I am looking at for this September.”

There may be other convenience stores who will decided to start selling alcohol in the coming weeks, and there are others that have been in the liquor business through a previous expansion in conjunction with the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO)

These include the Godrey General Store, Gilmour's Market in Harrowsmith, Kaladar Shell, and Inverary Home Hardware. These locations are not effected by the LCBO strike, which has shuttered the LCBO locations in Sydenham, Sharbot Lake, and Plevna.

The LCBO licensed locations at the Verona Foodland remains open as well, as it is also a licensed store and is staffed by employees of the Foodland.