Plan to sell liquor at Wegmans in Woodbridge met with resistance

by Sergio Bichao on Jun 17th | Email

Wegman's Mt. Laurel

Wegmans employee Terry Sullivan prices wines in the new wines, liquor and beer section of the store in Mount Laurel. (Staff photo: Avi Steinhardt)

WOODBRIDGE, NJ -- Produce on aisle 1. Cheese on aisle 2. Beer and wine on aisle 3?

Supermarkets that sell liquor are rare in New Jersey. But Wegmans, which already sells liquor at three of its seven stores in the state, is now also looking to offer it at its Woodbridge location.

Wegmans has joined other supermarket chains to push the state to relax laws limiting the number of liquor licenses each company can own.

The law change is being opposed by a group of liquor store owners worried of losing business to supermarket giants

Wegmans is getting further resistance in Woodbridge, where the New Jersey Liquor Store Alliance is challenging a license renewal, and where township officials remain skeptical.

Moreover, a township ordinance prohibiting grocery stores from selling liquor may also put a cork in the plan altogether.

Wegmans' proposal for the Woodbridge supermarket on Gill Lane calls for sectioning off an area equal to the length of eight aisles in the center of the store.

“Our store will not be selling these products.  We will lease space to an independently owned and operated liquor store,” Jo Natale, a spokeswoman for the Rochester, N.Y. based company said.

“But it’s still within the store,” said Councilwoman Brenda Yori Velasco, who has expressed reservations about the plan. “Their lawyers' interpretation may be different from our lawyers' interpretation.”

Velasco, whose family owned a liquor store for nearly 30 years in Union County, said her biggest worry is how Wegmans might impact small retailers.

“Small business is the backbone of our downtowns. There are a lot of vacancies right now in our downtown streets. This would hurt some of them right now.”

Paul Santelle, owner of Garden State Discount Liquors in Perth Amboy, agrees.

Santelle is the executive director of the New Jersey Liquor Store Alliance, which opposes a bill introduced in April by Assemblyman Louis Greenwald, D-Camden, that would allow stores to own up to 10 liquor licenses. Since 1962, companies and individuals have been limited to two.

The NJLSA has also filed challenges against liquor licenses held by the Wegmans Food Company and companies owned by Wegman relatives, alleging the company is trying to circumvent the two-license limit.

Wegmans owns the liquor licenses it uses at its Bridgewater and Princeton stores. But its Mt. Laurel and Cherry Hill stores lease space to JSW Wine & Spirits, whose license is controlled by Jason Wehle, the son-in-law of CEO Danny Wegman. JWG Fine Wines & Spirits, controlled by Joan Wegman Goldberg, whose grandfather founded the store in 1916, is seeking to transfer its license to the store in Woodbridge.

Natale said the company is not worried about their competitors’ challenge.

“We have made no secret of the fact that we lease space to liquor stores that are independently owned and operated by some members of the Wegman family.  This is well within the framework of existing New Jersey law,” she said.

“It is not uncommon in New Jersey for different members of the same family to own separate liquor licenses.”

Rich Levesque, director for Retailers for Responsible Liquor Licensing, a group lobbying to get rid of the two-license limit, said the law came about to combat mob influence in the industry.

“We live in a time that’s a little bit different than the world in the 1950s,” he said. “In reality, 45 other states allow supermarkets to sell beer or wine and there are liquor sores that also exist in those other states. There already is a lot of protection on the books that don’t allow for supermarkets to undercut their competitors.”

Other supermarkets like Acme, Stop & Shop, Pathmark, Whole Foods, independent Shop-Rite owners and the New Jersey Food Council, a food distributors lobby group, also back the law change, arguing that shoppers should be able to buy beer and wine at the same place they pick up ingredients for their barbecue or dinner.

Santelle, however, says existing law works just fine.

“Until Wegmans began building their Walmart-size grocery stores there was never a need to talk about the convenience of one-stop shopping. Almost every grocery chain was in a strip mall where there was also a liquor store next door to it,” he said. “There was never a problem in New Jersey until Wegmans came to town.”