Ontario Convenience Now Selling Alcoholic Drinks

As of September 5, convenience stores across Ontario will be allowed to sell beer, cider, wine and premixed alcoholic drinks from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week. More than 4,000 convenience stores in Ontario have been granted a license to sell booze.

There has been plenty of handwringing about making alcohol more available than it already is in the province. But alcohol is already widely available in much of the country.

 Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador allow convenience stores to sell alcoholic beverages. In New Brunswick you can get wine, beer and cider at grocery stores. In B.C., some grocery stores sell wine.

In Alberta, liquor has been sold at some 7-Eleven locations since 2021 and is allowed to do so because the locations have dine-in areas, so can be treated like restaurants. But Ontario’s decision has now inspired Alberta to investigate the possibility of expanding liquor sales to grocery stores and convenience stores. 

Ever since 2018, Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford, first promised to do so during his election campaign, but it hasn’t been so easy for Ford. To start, there was the decision to pay the brewers who own the Beer Store chain up to $225 million to get out of a contract that would have expired in 16 months. Alcohol sales were also a central issue between the government and the union representing more than 9,000 employees at the provincially owned Liquor Control Board of Ontario that saw the workers strike for just over two weeks this summer. LCBO will now be the exclusive wholesaler for alcoholic beverages sold at convenience stores, but spirits will still only be available for purchase at LCBO stores.

Being in a 7-Eleven seems like it’s going to be a lot different. The Japanese-owned company, which Quebec-based Couche-Tard is trying to buy, has sought full licenses to not only sell alcoholic beverages but also serve them inside the more than 50 locations it operates in Ontario.

 When it comes to costs, customers may find different price tags on the same item at different convenience stores. Under the new rules, convenience stores and grocery stores will be allowed to set their own prices, although not below legislated minimums.

While, convenience stores are happy, others are not so keen for the changes.

 More than 6,000 people die each year in Ontario from causes that are attributed to alcohol, and selling booze in convenience stores will increase that number, according to Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

“The main driver of alcohol-related harm is convenience. Decades of research show that increased ease of access leads to more consumption and, in turn, more harm,” the center said in a statement released earlier this year.

As far as demographics go and according to the latest Civic Science data, the majority of Gen Z (61%) report they consume five or fewer drinks per week, which is close to Gen Xer (62%) and Boomer (59%) consumption habits. Instead, young Millennial drinkers aged 25-29 index as the most likely of all age groups to drink fewer than five drinks a week (at 66%). Although young Millennials report more regular drinking than older adults (44% drink at least weekly), the data indicate they are overall the most likely to limit the amount they drink.

It will be worth watching how the changes play out in drinking culture, and whether they could affect the drinking habits of millennials and Gen Z, if at all.

 Getting here certainly hasn’t been free of contentiousness and there will be some worries about the new way of doing things in Ontario.