For the first time ever, six-packs of beer are now flying off the shelves of a London grocery store.
The Loblaws Oakridge Superstore on Oxford St. at Hyde Park Rd. cut the ribbon on its beer selection at 9am Tuesday.
It's one of 58 grocery stores across the province that will be allowed to start selling beer by the end of the year. Eventually, the program will expand to include 450 grocery retailers by 2017.
Alex Hassan, Oakridge Superstore Manager, says prior to the launch of their beer selection they had a lot of moving parts to deal with to make sure they are selling beer responsibly.
"Anyone 18-years-old or older can handle the beer but to sell you have to have your smart serve training," says Hassan. "So we have specific folks that are going to be handling the beer and specific people who are smart serve trained who will be selling the beer."
The Superstore's selection is limited to two end-cap displays, which have locking caps to prevent people from getting to the alcohol after hours. The store also has segregated the checkout lanes where beer can be purchased.
"For the launch we have a beer lane, so all of our beer will be sold at that lane," says Hassan. "We have green "beer here" t-shirts that identify everyone here at the store who is smart serve trained. So for the launch we are limiting the sale to our beer lanes but for the future we will be opening it up on our front end with beer lane signs identifying specific checkouts with colleagues who are smart serve trained."
With a committment to sell 50% craft beers, Hassen is confident the Superstore will be the place to go for beer, despite its close proximity to The Beer Store.
"The craft beer is really advantageous to us because it's trendy, it's popular and The Beer Store from what I see, doesn't have as large an offering as what we are going to have here," says Hassan. "Definitely it is going to be a driver for us to get people into the store here because we have such a good craft beer variety to sell and future state we are going to keep expanding on that. We are going to be a destination for craft beer."
Licences were also issued to the Food Basics at Commissioners Rd. and Wonderland Rd., the Walmart SuperCentre on Fanshawe Park Rd. West, and the Farm Boy on Beaverbrook Ave. Farm Boy has announced it will begin selling beer at its Beaverbrook Ave. location on Friday. Walmart and Food Basics have not given any indication when they will start selling beer.
The Liberal government announced the 13 independent grocers and 45 large grocery stores permitted to sell beer last month. It is the biggest shakeup to happen to alcohol retailing in Ontario since prohibition was ended in 1927.