Beer Sale Restrictions
State law does not impose any particular restrictions on the retail sale of beer at grocery stores or other locations when beer is purchased for consumption off the premises. Local cities and counties may impose restrictions if they so choose. In a free market, government does not have the right to tell businesses what lawful products they may or may not sell and when they may sell it. Such regulations are often arbitrary and violate the principles of free enterprise.
Some cities limit the sale of beer to daytime hours, some cities require sales to be under surveillance during the night, and some cities prohibit the sale of beer altogether. The beer sale restrictions metric is calculated from two data points: beer sale hour restrictions and a beer sale policy score. The hours of sale are scored based on the total percent of the day (out of 24 hours) that beer sales are restricted.
The policy score is a number from 1-5 based on the following scale:
- Beer sales completely prohibited
- Day & time restrictions on sales (this typically applies when cities prohibit all beer sales on Sunday)
- Time limit on sales
- Sales under surveillance (this applies when a city allows 24 hour sales but imposes surveillance requirements)
- No sale restrictions
The hours of sale percentage and the policy score are each normalized independently and weighted before being added together. The policy score counts for 60% and the hours of sale counts for 40%. The policy score recieves slightly more emphasis because, while the specific hour limitations may vary slightly from city to city, their variation is somewhat arbitrary, whereas the overall policy of a city to restrict sales or not creates a more significant limitation on the free market in a particular city.
To see a specific city's laws for this metric, click on its name in the right column, then find the row in the table below the Free Enterprise category.