{"id":1533,"date":"2011-09-09T12:39:37","date_gmt":"2011-09-09T16:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/?p=1533"},"modified":"2011-09-12T10:20:09","modified_gmt":"2011-09-12T14:20:09","slug":"liquor-sales-spiked-in-days-before-irene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/09\/09\/liquor-sales-spiked-in-days-before-irene\/","title":{"rendered":"Liquor Sales Spiked In Days Before Irene"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Liquor Commission’s<\/a> been in the news a lot lately, between record-breaking year-over-year sales and plans to add a new store at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport<\/a>.\u00a0 But StateImpact was curious about something else.<\/p>\n

Was there a spike in booze sales in the run-up to Irene?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Pam Lane\/Flickr<\/p>

StateImpact's got the Liquor Commission numbers for pre-Irene sales.<\/p><\/div>\n

Remember, right up until the last minute, there was talk of a big hurricane hitting New Hampshire.\u00a0 Even as a tropical storm, Irene did some serious damage.\u00a0 But for most New Hampshirites, it wasn’t quite the we-all-have-to-hole-up-with-a-month’s-supply-of-D-batteries event that forecasters thought it might be.<\/p>\n

With the run on batteries<\/a>, emergency tapers, camp cookers, and other hunkering-down gear, StateImpact wondered, was there a run on liquor as well?\u00a0 After all, without electricity, there would be no computers, no TV, and no e-readers or long cell phone calls to dull the boredom.\u00a0 And you can only do the ‘ol hunch-over-a-book-with-a-flashlight trick for so long.\u00a0 So would some people consider booze viable entertainment during a hurricane-induced blackout?<\/p>\n

The answer, it seems, is yes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The Liquor Commission’s Chief Financial Officer George Tsiopras went over the sales numbers with StateImpact.\u00a0 We’re focusing on Friday, August 26th and Saturday August 27th, the two days before Irene made landfall.\u00a0 And we’re comparing them to sales figures for Friday and Saturday of the same week last year.<\/p>\n

Before we share these numbers with you, there are a few notes.\u00a0 First: New Hampshire has strategically placed its 76 state liquor stores to draw-in sales from other states.\u00a0 It’s worked out so well that only around half <\/em>of hard liquor sales are actually to New Hampshire residents.\u00a0 So these numbers could represent Massachusetts people and other New Englanders stocking-up, too.\u00a0 Second:\u00a0 Because regulations are looser around beer and wine, allowing grocery stores and other retail outlets to sell them, it takes a long time for the Liquor Commission to get those figures.\u00a0 The agency has no idea how Irene affected those sales.\u00a0 These are just hard liquor numbers.\u00a0 Finally: We were interested in retail sales.\u00a0 So sales to restaurants, bars, and other wholesale customers aren’t included.<\/p>\n

NH Liquor Sales, Last Weekend In August<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
DAY<\/th>\n2011<\/th>\n2010<\/th>\nINCREASE<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Friday<\/td>\n$1.9 million<\/td>\n$1.8 million<\/td>\n$100,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Saturday<\/td>\n$1.8 million<\/td>\n$1.6 million<\/td>\n$200,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Total Two-Day Sales<\/td>\n$3.7 million<\/td>\n$3.4 million<\/td>\n$300,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Percentage<\/strong><\/td>\n5.5%<\/strong><\/td>\n12.5%<\/strong><\/td>\n8.8%<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

So the Liquor Commission saw a $300,000 bump in sales two days before Irene.\u00a0 Tsiopras notes that the last weekend in August is historically a “stock-up” weekend anyway, with people making last-minute trips to the lakes and closing down their summer homes.\u00a0 And the Liquor Commission has seen a steady trend of increasing year-over-year sales.\u00a0 But be that as it may, Tsiopras says, “I think there is some pre-Irene activity there as well.”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Liquor Commission’s been in the news a lot lately, between record-breaking year-over-year sales and plans to add a new store at Manchester-Boston Regional Airport.\u00a0 But StateImpact was curious about something else. Was there a spike in booze sales in the run-up to Irene?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":1591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[164,514,156],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1533"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1558,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions\/1558"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}