A Gaithersburg wine and beer store owner says a recurrent lack of planning by the Montgomery County Alcohol Beverage Services (ABS), which controls alcohol distribution to local stores, means he doesn’t have the stock he needs ahead of the Fourth of July weekend.
“It is a broken system that has been broken for decades. It’s not going to get any better,” Downtown Crown Wine and Beer owner Arash Tafakor told Bethesda Today on Tuesday. “The ABS is a small business killer.”
Tafakor sent an email to the ABS, as well as news outlets, on Tuesday morning complaining it is unable to provide 12-packs of the Mexican beer Corona and Corona Light to his store at 303 Copley Place in Gaithersburg ahead of the holiday weekend.
“This failure directly harms small businesses like ours, which plan and staff up for this peak holiday weekend, only to be held back by ABS’s continued incompetence and lack of basic logistical foresight,” the email said. “We’ve heard this is tied to your end-of-fiscal-year inventory procedures — if true, it’s a clear example of internal bureaucracy taking precedence over real-world business needs.”
ABS spokesperson Jocelyn Rawat said in a statement to Bethesda Today on Tuesday that patrons who want to purchase Corona products for the holiday weekend can still do so. She noted that Tafakor is the only local store owner to complain about not having the stock he wants.
“Although the 12-pack bottles were out of stock for a brief time, Corona products have been and continue to be available in the 6-pack and 24-pack options,” Rawat said. “ABS expects to receive shipments of the 12-pack Corona bottles [Wednesday] and Thursday, which means that licensed establishments will have the full range of options for the holiday weekend.”
Montgomery County is one of the few counties and 17 states in the country that has a monopoly over wholesale distribution of products to beer, wine and liquor to local liquor stores. It also has exclusive authority to sell liquor in retail stores and operates 27 county stores.
Whether the county should continue to hold a monopoly is an issue that has been debated for many years, with proponents often citing the more than $35 million or so in annual net profit that the department takes in and the jobs it provides. Critics often point to a lack of competition in the private sector, as well as the frustration that some business owners have with getting products.
The issue surfaced in the 2022 county executive race in which Marc Elrich (D) won a second four-year term. He expressed his support for the status quo, while his opponents proposed a change to the current system.
Tafakor said beer shortages at ABS occur every year around this time, as well as shortages of champagne ahead of Christmas. The Downtown Crown Wine and Beer store also sent an email to the ABS in June 2023 about Modelo, another Mexican beer, being out of stock at the county warehouse.
Also, Tafakor sent an email to licensees in the county in May, saying the ABS “forces licensees to pay 30-90% more for products than the rest of the state,” but the ABS disputed that claim.
“Just like any other wholesaler, of course ABS must mark up the cost of goods. In this specific case, the base markup is just over 29%,” Rawat said Tuesday. “These prices vary from month to month, but they are always consistent with wholesale prices throughout the state.”
Rawat said ABS’ priorities are “helping licensed establishments thrive” and “providing revenue that is used for resident services that otherwise would be funded by tax dollars.”
