Harrisburg – The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board today announced it will expand its recently introduced curbside pickup service to 389 more Fine Wine & Good Spirits locations across the commonwealth on Monday, April 27, to serve more customers seeking wine and spirits while maintaining social distancing practices in the interest of public health and safety.
“Beginning Monday, we’ll have 565 Fine Wine & Good Spirits stores across Pennsylvania accepting orders by phone for curbside pickup,” said PLCB Chairman Tim Holden. “We acknowledge that Pennsylvanians are frustrated with busy signals and want broader access to wine and spirits, so after learning from our experiences this past week, we’ve made improvements to process orders faster, expand the hours we take orders by phone, and be more flexible in scheduling pickups, even the same day, if pickup appointments are available.”
The expanded list of stores offering curbside service is available online. Most stores will support curbside service Monday through Saturday – taking a limited number of orders on a first-call, first-served basis beginning at 9:00 AM each day and scheduling pickup appointments between 9:00 AM and 6:00 PM those days – but some stores will operate on more limited days and hours.
Each store has its own unique inventory and staff will guide callers through the products available for purchase before finalizing each order and taking payment by phone. At pickup, customers will be required to present identification before the order is delivered.
LINDSEY SHUEY / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Seagey Stock, Fine Wine and Good Spirits employee, brings an order to a car at the Fine Wine and Good Spirits Pottsville Park Plaza location on Tuesday, April 21, 2020.
Curbside pickup orders will be limited to up to six bottles per order, and credit cards are the only accepted form of payment. Orders will also be limited to one order per caller, per store, per day, and all curbside pickup sales are final.
Stores will continue to accept the first 50 to 100 orders placed each day, on a first-call, first-served basis, until fulfillment capacity grows to accept more orders per day. Orders will only be accepted by the store’s published phone number; no orders will be accepted by email or voicemail.
“We’re making strides in expanding service to Fine Wine & Good Spirits customers, and we hope that adding hundreds more locations for curbside pickup will help us get through this surge of demand for wine and spirits,” said Holden. “Once again, we ask customers to remain patient, and we’re hopeful that the more e-commerce and curbside pickup orders we can process, over time, the better we’ll be able to serve more and more Pennsylvanians through this pandemic.”
On Monday, April 20, the first day curbside pickup was introduced at 176 Fine Wine & Good Spirts locations across Pennsylvania, the PLCB transacted nearly 6,000 curbside orders for $569,000 in sales. Tuesday, 8,000 orders for $756,000 were sold, Wednesday, 11,300 orders for $1.05 million were sold, and Thursday saw 12,800 orders for $1.27 million. In its first four days, the PLCB’s curbside pickup program sold 38,145 orders totaling $3.64 million. Sales figures are preliminary and unaudited.
The PLCB also continues to grow e-commerce sales at FineWineAndGoodSpirits.com, now with more than 100 locations picking and packing e-commerce orders. Website access continues to be randomized to avoid overwhelming the site with high traffic and prolong access throughout the day, although daily orders have increased exponentially.
