You can buy beer and wine in regular stores in PA.
OMG don't get me started. Other states let grocery stores sell beer and wine. In Pa. the only way they can do it is to set up a restaurant, buy a full restaurant liquor license and run a separate bottle shop inside the restaurant inside the grocery store. And they can't even buy the beer and wine from wholesalers -- they have to buy it at full retail price from the state stores and local beer distributors.
So if you're buying wine at Giant, you're paying for that liquor license (which in the Philly area runs $400,000), for the cost of running a restaurant, plus the cost of keeping a separate register (because you can't pay through the regular grocery store register).
You're paying the full retail price to the State Store system, plus the excise tax, plus the Johnstown Flood tax, plus state sales tax. So you're basically paying $18-20 for a $12 bottle of wine and Giant is probably STILL losing money. In which case you are not only paying 30%-40% more for your wine, you're you're paying higher grocery prices to subsidize Giant's wine business. Welcome to Pennsylvania.
Contrast that to New Jersey, or Maryland, Virginia, DC, Delaware, New York, where a $12 bottle of wine actually sells for $12. Or visit France where, in the absence of excessive liquor taxes, that $12 bottle of wine will sell for 3 or 4 euros ($3.50 to $4.60).
There are a lot of fools in the United States, and unfortunately a disproportionate number of them live in Pennsylvania. I love this place, I've lived here most of my life. But geez, people in this state just have such low expectations probably because most of them never actually leave the state to see what life is like in other places. You have no idea unless you travel just how dumb Pennsylvania is.
