The first ABC store opened 90 years ago. Why does North Carolina still have them?
You can't buy liquor just ANYWHERE in this state. So why, in an era where government control seems to be out of favor among lawmakers, why is the government-run liquor store still going?
Look, I’m not here to talk about the New York City mayor’s race, but here’s someone invoking North Carolina to dunk on other people’s unfounded fears:
(Clears throat) (Channels Yakov Smirnoff) In Soviet Carolina, liquor store owns you!
I digress. We just quietly passed a very significant milestone here. On July 2nd, 1935, the very first state-run liquor store opened in Wilson. It was, remarkably, a low key affair, considering that nobody in the entire state had bought whisky legally for 26 years. Reporters from across the state showed up. They watched as a 41-year-old cash register repairman from Cary named Robert Lee Perry became the first customer in ABC store history. Moments later, someone else bought a bottle of gin. The locals had predicted long lines. Instead, according to an account in the Raleigh News & Observer, the opening “created little more attention than the opening of another grocery.” It sadly noted that there were no fights! No drunkenness! No crowds at all! The store had been in a rush to open, and was only able to get some lower-end liquor. By the end of the day, it had sold a little more than $1,000 worth ($23,000 or so in today’s dollars) to 675 customers.
The State magazine, which is known as Our State magazine today, really wanted you to know how boring the whole thing was. “Neither the outside view or the inside view is particularly impressive. It’s just another store, that’s all,” its reporter wrote. “You might get the idea—from the interior view of the store—that there was a big rush of customers, but such was not the case. Most of those folks shown in the picture were ‘just looking around.’”
Sales for the next few days were about the same. The lack of excitement could have been related to the fact that over the next few weeks, ABC stores hastily opened up in 17 eastern North Carolina counties at a breakneck pace. Most wanted to get up and running before a potential state Supreme Court decision could shut them down. That decision never came. And thus, the era of state-run liquor store began, and it’s been running mostly the same way in the 90 years since.
So, um, why do we do it this way?
The Order of the Knights of the Rum-Cask
North Carolinians have been gettin’ sloshed for a long time. William Byrd, who was a real piece of work, was a Virginian who hated people from the state to his south. He called us lazy drunks. Writing in 1728, Byrd complained that North Carolinians “were more impatient to eat [and drink] their supper than to earn it.” He also called them “Knights of the Rum-Cask,” which, let’s be honest, is a fantastic burn.
Churches throughout the 18th and 19th century warned of the evils of alcohol, but nobody was putting the full court press on lawmakers to do anything about it. According to legendary former Wilmington Star-News reporter Ben Steelman, who wrote a fantastic history of liquor in this state back in 2010, things began to change after the Civil War. Why? Politics.
The conservative Democratic party, many of whom were white supremacists, started passing Jim Crow laws. One prominent Democrat, senator Furnifold Simmons, began to refer to rural distilleries as “Republican recruiting stations.” Most people were not in favor of making it harder to get booze, though. A referendum to ban liquor in North Carolina in 1881 went down by more than a 3-to-1 margin.
So rather than go big, the temperance movement decided to make a bunch of small shifts over time, Steelman wrote:
Sentiment shifted after 1900, though. North Carolina's enactment of Jim Crow laws – which deprived tens of thousands of African Americans of their right to vote – removed a barrier to prohibition, noted historian Harry McCown. Democrats no longer needed to fear splitting the white vote over the liquor issue.
First up, the Watts Act of 1903 banned the making and selling of liquor outside of town, which put an end to the “Republican recruiting stations.” Another law three years later banned the same thing in towns with fewer than 1,000 people, effectively turning 68 counties dry in North Carolina. Around that time, a woman named Carrie Nation was barnstorming her way across the United States, giving over-the-top speeches about the dangers of bars, saloons, and taverns. In 1907, she toured North Carolina. In particular, she told people how much Salisbury sucked, calling it a “hell hole” with “plenty of poverty, degradation and suffering.” What was the cause? Smoking and drinking. She made headlines, which helped her draw crowds, which helped her sell merch like miniature hatchets, which helped per pay her legal bills. Nation had been arrested back in Kansas for using hatchets to hatchets to break windows and bottles in saloons. Hence the hatchet merch!
The tides turned. In 1909, a new referendum to ban all alcohol in the state passed with 62 percent of the vote. The state became the first in the nation to have voters pass prohibition, and the first in the South to ban all booze.
And with that, North Carolinians stopped drinking altoge—lol no they didn’t.
Gettin’ That Shine On
Does everything in North Carolina eventually devolve into a NASCAR story? I mean, maybe! Stock car racing as a sport grew out of moonshine runners with fast cars, who needed those fast cars to escape the revenuers and, before that, the laws that banned alcohol. Would we have had Junior Johnson without prohibition? Who can say!
But yes, prohibition in North Carolina provided for a preview of what was to come in the rest of the United States a decade later. People began to home brew. They got to know their friendly neighborhood bootleggers. And they suddenly needed prescriptions for alcohol, which was still legal for medical reasons (communion wine also remained legal). People got their fix thanks to generous doctors and drug stores. They also decided to make road trips to liquor stores that were still operating just across the border in South Carolina and Virginia.
In 1920, the 18th amendment to the U.S. Constitution put prohibition into effect nationwide. People hated it, and it was repealed with the 21st amendment in 1933. You know what state didn’t vote to ratify that amendment, though? North Carolina. Voters once again shot it down by more than a 2-to-1 margin. The amendment at federal laws basically left it to the states to regulate the sale of alcohol. North Carolina regulated it by continuing to ban it.
That changed when state leaders saw that just how much sales tax money Virginia and South Carolina were raking in from liquor sales. Hence, at the very end of the 1935 legislative session, lawmakers quietly slid in some bills to allow 17 eastern counties to sell liquor. Those counties rushed to open stores as quickly as they could.
It wasn’t until 1937 when the state sobered up to reality. People were going across state lines to get booze. Bootleggers were selling it pretty handily in dry counties. If you wanted alcohol, it was easy to get. So the state decided to set up what we know as the Alcoholic Beverage Commission (ABC), which would allow counties and cities statewide to set up their own ABC stores. Writes Steelman:
The theory was that government-owned stores would avoid the evils of the old-time saloons and would have no incentive to encourage customers to drink more, as a privately licensed dealer might. Also, by putting the management under a separate commission, [chairman Victor] Bryant and other commissioners thought the system could be kept free from politics.
People complained about the high prices at stores. Even so, many of them started going there instead of meeting up with their local bootleggers, many of which initially lowered prices before going out of business altogether.
The local ABC commission set the price, chose the brands, didn’t allow those brands to advertise, and, until 1978, was entirely full service. Meaning: If you were a customer, you couldn’t pick a bottle off the shelf and bring it to the cashier. You told the store worker what you wanted, and they brought it to you! You know how, in New Jersey, you’re not allowed to pump your own gas? It was like that, but for whiskey.
The ABC was also in charge of regulating all alcohol, which also meant wine and beer. Counties had to individually approve any sort of alcohol sales, which most did overwhelmingly. Wilson County voted for it by a 10-to-1 margin! Other towns and counties kept it off the ballot entirely in an effort to remain dry.
There were other quirks. In restaurants and bars, if you wanted the bartender to mix you a cocktail, you had to bring your own booze, usually in a brown paper bag. That didn’t change until 1979, when voters in New Hanover County approved liquor-by-the-drink. Happy hours were, and are, still illegal. Beer and wine sales couldn’t start until after noon on Sundays, and ABC stores were closed on those days completely. Blue laws! And “public establishments” where alcohol made up more than 70% of all sales—i.e. bars—weren’t actually bars, but rather private clubs, which had to have members and charge them fees. Hence, imagine my confusion when I moved to North Carolina in 2005, showed up at The Gin Mill in Charlotte, and was asked to “sign in” to become a “member” in order to have a Bud Light (a “beer”).
Things have gradually changed. Over the years, voters in dry cities and counties have gradually approved beer, wine, and mixed drink sales. The town of Jefferson just voted to allow mixed drinks in 2023! Social districts, allowing for people to grab a drink from a restaurant and walk around outside, have also popped up after a pandemic-era law allowed them in 2021. Even Graham County, way out west, which had been the last completely dry county in the state, lost that designation in 2021 after the town of Robbinsville allowed some beer and wine sales. Graham and Madison counties are still the only counties without an ABC store, though.
Prying the ABC Store from my Cold Dead Local Commissioner’s Hands
In general, though, North Carolina’s alcohol laws are basically carve-outs from the total prohibition of the early 20th century. Meaning, unless something is explicitly blessed by the legislature and approved by local voters, it’s not allowed. Are people cool with that? Not really! And when it comes to state-run ABC stores, most people would rather them be privatized. Most recently, a survey in 2023 showed much more support for private liquor stores than government ones. Previous governors like Bev Perdue and Pat McCrory campaigned on privatizing ABC stores, although they didn’t actually do anything about it once they were elected.
There have been a lot of bills and pushes over the years to actually do something about it. There are a lot of logistical reasons to do so. There have been bottlenecks at the state liquor warehouse in Raleigh, where every bottle of liquor in the state has to pass through. There are supply chain problems locally, which bars and restaurants find annoying. In 2019, a report to lawmakers found that state revenue would actually increase over time if liquor stores were privatized and taxed. But every time a bill is introduced to make it happen, it dies. Why?
It’s hard to say exactly, but there are a few suspects here. One is that the ABC isn’t just a single, state-run monolith like it is in the other 16 states with government liquor control. Rather, there are 171 local ABC boards, each of which gets a cut of the sales to fund services and local schools and libraries. That system, which is a bit of a logistical nightmare, works out well for the locals, who might be anti-government but tend to be pro-money. Plus, the state beer and wine distributors lobby, which is extremely powerful, wants liquor stores to remain the same way they currently are. And the anti-alcohol forces still point to the dangers of liquor. Knowing all of that, this summary from Business NC conveniently explains why the ABC system doesn’t seem like it’s going to change anytime soon:
A 2019 state report noted that North Carolina collects more taxes per gallon of liquor sold than any Southern state and ranks fourth nationally. Liquor prices and ABC profit margins are unusually high, while liquor consumption per capita ranks among the lowest in the U.S.
Changes have come, but they tend to be small ones that get rid of annoying small things. The membership requirement for bars went away in 2022, for example. Bigger changes always seem to stall. This year, a bill that would have changed several things about the ABC, most notably allowing happy hours, went nowhere.
Hence, North Carolina, a state that’s been under Republican control for 15 years, can’t seem to get rid of its government-run liquor stores. In 2023, the chair of the house ABC committee, republican Tim Moffitt, told Business NC what others have said for decades: That someday, ABC stores will be a thing of the past. “At some point, North Carolina won’t be a control state,” he said. “I believe the intractability of our control system and how frustrating it is to operate within it will bring about its own end.” That said, nobody is really celebrating the 90th anniversary of the state’s first ABC store. When the last one will close is anyone’s guess.
If ABC stores go away, where would we get moving boxes??
As long as they keep blasting the classic rock like they do at my Gaston Co. local, I don't care who runs it! Also, FWIW, the clerks at all the ABCs I've frequented are some of the nicest folks you'll meet in a retail environment...helpful and friendly to a fault!