PLCB’s Consumer Ca$htastrophe Continues

In another blinding flash of the obvious, the PLCB, Pennsylvania’s purveyors of perestroika, revealed in a Harrisburg Patriot News article today what we already knew:  The supermarket wine kiosks are a miserable mimicry of privatization.

The baffling board backed its use of the program, saying it needed to barter 300 bottles per week per kiosk, but admitted the bottom line for bottoms up was a bust.  In a sampling of supermarkets, the Patriot found one garnering just 84 bottles per week from January to April this year—about half of what it did from June-December 2010 and far off the mark of what LCB’s CEO Joe Conti said would be a, “break even.”

But it should be no wonder the prodigal pinot pushers have been anything but popular—they remain completely out of touch with consumers.   They’ve given us Chairman’s Select when we just want to select from our own chair; turned booze buffs into bootleggers of a legal commodity; turned syrah sippers into straw blowers, and now want schnapps sycophants to suffer the same.

A PLCB spokesperson recently said, “The board is looking to bring exactly what customers are saying they want – convenience.”  Okay, great, here’s what would be convenient for consumers:  Government needs to stop acting like privatization and start acting to privatize.