A Wawa store near the Delaware line has received a township OK to sell beer, Chadds Ford Live reported.
Concord Township supervisors approved the application for the Naamans Creek Road Store. The authorization is limited to beer, the news website reported.
It was also reported that approvals had already been granted for Acme, Whole Foods and a Wegmans store slated to open later this year. The Wawa is a five-minute drive from Delaware.
Supermarkets in Pennsylvania are allowed to sell beer and wine if a café is on the premises. Convenience stores with delis also appear to fall into the same category.
Acme has been advertising its supermarket beer offerings on a billboard along Interstate 95 in Delaware.
Sheetz, dominant convenience store outside of Wawa’s stronghold in the Delaware Valley, is now selling beer at one of its stores in Altoona, PA.
The looming beer availability at Wawa is addition to previously approved changes at beer distributors that reduced the minimum number of containers that can be sold from 24 to 12. The change was brought by the popularity of craft beer, which becomes expensive in large quantities.
The changes are likely to reduce sales at liquor stores in adjacent areas of Delaware and could start a conversation about widening the sales channel in the First State.
A cumbersome combination of high prices and high quantities of beer had aided Dealware businesses. over the years. Pennsylvania operates a state owned store system for wine and spirits. Efforts to privatize that system have failed as unions, beer distributors and most recently the new governor opposed the change.
Several years ago an effort to sell alcoholic beverages in supermakets in Delaware went nowhere in the Delaware General Assembly.
Delaware also limits the number of liquor stores that can be owned by one entity to two,
The reduction in the number of stores followed the entry of Total Wine and More, which opened its first stores in Delaware. Total Wine now has stores coast to coast.
