Initiative 1183<\/a> last year to get the state out of the liquor business and privatize sales.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n“We have heard very positive reactions to seeing liquor being stocked on our shelves,” said Safeway spokeswoman Sara Osborne in an email.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Safeway already has displays ready to go with a banner draped over the stocked shelves letting customers know they can buy hard liquor starting Friday, June 1.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Safeway plans to carry about 450 varieties of spirits in various sizes and will display the hard liquor bottles next to the wine section.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Private buyers bought the rights to the four state-run liquor stores in Kent and also plan to open Friday. Those stores will face tough competition from the large grocery stores.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“We know shoppers always appreciate convenience when grocery shopping and it\u2019s not convenient to make an extra stop for liquor,” Osborne said about competition from the liquor-only stores.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Albertsons, QFC, Top Food and Drug, Fred Meyer, Winco Foods, Bartell, Rite Aid, Target and Alpha XR are among the stores in Kent that will sell spirits.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Fred Meyer has run newspaper ads promoting how one-stop shopping gets even better with spirits coming to the store, even with a final tagline of “I’ll drink to that!” The company paid for a large wrap ad Thursday around the Seattle Times to promote liquor sales at its stores.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Stores must have at least 10,000 square feet to sell liquor under the new law, but the former state-run stores are excluded from that rule.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Costco stores in Tukwila and Covington also will sell spirits. The Issaquah-based company contributed nearly all of the $22 million spent in the state to get voters to pass Initiative 1183.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Washington Supreme Court upheld the initiative on Thursday on a 5-4 vote, allowing sales to begin Friday. Opponents of the switch to privatize sales had filed suit in an effort to stop the change.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Liquor sales will flow more freely in Kent and throughout the state starting Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":7011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-7010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7010"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7010"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=7010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}