No more Minnesota vice?

Published 10:41 am Thursday, July 14, 2011

HIBBING — It’s been business as usual for cigarette retailers since the Minnesota shutdown on July 1, but that could change if legislators don’t find a budget solution before wholesale distributors start running out of state-stamped cigarettes.

According to Minnesota law, a tax stamp (which can’t be purchased during the shutdown) must be on cigarettes in order to be sold.

“If we run out of (stamped) cigarettes, we’ll go out of business,” said Tim Smith, a buyer at Granite City Jobbing, which supplies cigarettes from Rochester to Hibbing. Smith said Granite City took action prior to the shutdown by stockpiling stamps.

“We purchased as much as we can — it’s not cheap to buy a roll of stamps,” Smith said. “Like $50,000 or something per roll.”

Tom Sullivan, a co-owner of Range Tobacco in Hibbing, said he is not concerned about running out of cigarettes.

“My suppliers have all preordered and brought many in,” Sullivan said. “It cost them a fortune, but they’re preordered so they’re covered.”

Smith said he wasn’t sure how many stamps Granite City Jobbing had.

“When other wholesalers start to run out, that’s when there’s going to be a huge demand,” Smith said. “We don’t know how other wholesalers prepared, so it’s just hard to tell.”

Alcohol sales

Distributors and retailers of MillerCoors could also soon find themselves unable to sell 39 types of beer in Minnesota, including Miller High Life, Coors Light and Blue Moon.

MillerCoors spokesman Julian Green said the company received a letter June 30 informing them their brand-label registrations had expired. Under provisions of a state statue, no brands may be manufactured or imported into or sold in Minnesota unless the brand label was registered and approved. MillerCoors had already submitted paperwork about the registrations, but it was filled out incorrectly.

“We had not been notified that the paperwork was inadequate,” Green said. “… We received this particular letter on June 30, which was the date of the government shutdown.”

MillerCoors is currently trying to work with the state to find a resolution, Green said. They currently have no plans to pull beer off the shelves and have not notified distributors.

Missy Petroske, a bartender at Palmer’s Tavern in Hibbing, said she hasn’t heard anything about it.

“We’re just going to keep filling until we hear otherwise,” she said.

A spokesman for Starkovich Distributing in Virginia, which distributes MillerCoors, also said they had not yet received any information.

Lottery sales

The lack of lottery ticket sales has been noticed at local gas stations.

“We have a lot of people who want to buy them, and we have to explain to them that they can’t,” said Deb Yorkell, a cashier at the Highway 37 Clark Station. “We have some of our regulars who we don’t see as much now.”

Karlakay Schneider, manager of Freedom Valu Center gas station, said she had a similar experience in the wake of the shutdown.

“Your regular customers aren’t coming in because they usually just buy that,” Schneider said. “You get yelled at a lot.”

The loss of lottery sales probably means a loss of inside sales, or all of the smaller items stocked in gas stations. Neither Schneider nor Yorkell will know how much they’ve lost until the end of the month.

“(Customers) ask, ‘Well, why?’” Schneider said. “(I say), ‘Talk to your legislators and Congress.’”