Colorado Liquor Stores Aren’t Happy About Initiative 121

Jim Archibald and his wife have owned Morgan’s Liquor for twenty years. The store sits at 1200 East Evans Avenue, anchored right next to a Safeway, which to Morgan’s looks more like a corporate monster coming to eat up its sales.

January 1, 2019, was a dark day for independent liquor stores like Morgan’s; that’s when grocery stores were allowed to sell full-strength beer for the first time in Colorado. “Our beer sales have dropped 30 percent since [grocery stores] got beer,” Archibald says. As a result, he had to let go of four employees and cut his advertising budget. Now he fears another drop in sales could be coming, which could result in having to let even more employees go.

On the ballot this November will be Initiative 121, which would allow grocery and convenience stores to…