Supporters of the effort to allow grocery and convenience stores to sell full-strength beer are turning away from the General Assembly and on to voters.

For four years, beginning in 2009, the Legislature tried but failed to pass laws allowing grocery and/or convenience stores to sell full-strength beer or wine. The push from grocery store owners came after the Legislature lifted a ban on Sunday sales for liquor stores in 2008.

But the legislative effort to grant the authority to grocery stores is unlikely to be repeated in 2015. Rep. Kevin Priola, R-Henderson, who carried the most recent bill on the issue in 2013, said he isn’t planning another stab at it this year.

Chris Howes of the Colorado Retail Council, who also heads Colorado Consumers for Choice, said they are in full swing on a media campaign to educate voters about the issue, with a goal of a ballot initiative for the 2016 elections.

“If a bill came up, we would support it, but our focus now is on educating the public and pointing out that Colorado’s alcohol laws are not like those in other Western states,” where grocery stores can sell wine and regular beer. Howes said California, Arizona and Oregon all have laws allowing grocery stores to sell full-strength beer.

The group plans on using online ads to get people to sign petitions to allow full-strength beer and wine to be sold in grocery stores.

Currently grocery and convenience stores can sell only reduced-strength beer (3.2 in alochol content) and wine in the state with some minor exceptions.

Past opposition to the change in state law has come from liquor store owners and craft beer makers. “We love Colorado craft beer and want more of it,” Howes said. “We want to sell like other states. There’s nothing strange about it.” He also pointed out that Glendale has allowed a grocery store to sell full-strength beer since it opened in 2011, although the store (King Soopers) did so under state law that grants liquor licenses to drug stores.

A Facebook page (www.facebook.com/COConsumersForChoice) started in October has garnered more than 29,000 likes. In the past week, it pointed out that Colorado craft brewers already sell their beers at grocery stores outside of Colorado. The group also has signs posted in grocery stores that ask customers to sign an online petition, which could show whether the expensive process of running a ballot measure would be worthwhile.

Dan Haley, a spokesman for Consumers for Choice and vice president of Communications, Development and Strategy at EIS Solutions in Denver, said grocery stores understand and believe in the local foods movement, and “they want to stock local craft beers. Local [grocery] stores can make local decisions.” Haley pointed out that some companies that got their start in Colorado by selling just in local grocery stores have since done very well. He also noted the example of Oregon, which has a thriving craft brewery scene, and where craft beers are sold in grocery stores. “Opening markets is a good thing,” Haley told The Colorado Statesman. “We just want to make the liquor laws a little more fair in Colorado.”

But the craft brewers oppose any changes to state law. Steve Kurowski of the Colorado Brewers Guild pointed out that only a handful of craft brewers are able to sell their products in grocery stores out of state. But there are about 250 craft breweries in Colorado, and most of them would not be able to sell in the large-chain grocery stores in Colorado who back the full-strength campaign.

Small breweries in Colorado cannot sell in grocery stores in any state,” Kurowski told The Statesman. Their market, he said, is the independent liquor stores in their area, and state law allows the breweries to self-distribute. “They can do business right in the liquor store,” he said. That won’t happen with the large-chain grocery stores, because the effort would be prohibitively expensive. “You’d have to fly to the corporate offices and schedule meetings, and that costs a lot of money.”

Kim Schottleutner, owner of DTC Wine and Spirits and chair of the Colorado Licensed Beverage Association fears that changing the law will spell the end of jobs and businesses in Colorado.

Independent stores like his employ extra people because of craft beer sales. “We are approached daily, if not weekly, by new craft brewers, asking us to market their beers. They’d never find a place in the chain stores,” he said.

The grocery stores would only go after the most popular and best advertised craft beers, just as they do for coffee or potato chips, Shottleutner told The Statesman. “They won’t carry everyone’s beers. They’ll take the cream of the crop out of my store and my competitors’ stores. They just want the best and the players that have the most sought-after labels.”

That will cost the liquor stores in market share, and eventually, he warns, jobs and businesses could go under. “The ramifications are monumental.”

— Marianne@cooradostatesman.com