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www.IowaABD.com |
Lynn M. Walding, Administrator |
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e - NEWS |
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December 19, 2003 |
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1. Liquor Industry's New
Pitch: How to Drink Alcohol on Diet
2. Thanks to Cable,
Liquor Ads Find a TV Audience
3. Wine Importers Chafe
at New Anti-terror Law
4. R.I. Considers
Cutting Liquor-Sale Hours
1.
Liquor Industry's New Pitch: How to Drink
Alcohol on Diet
By Christopher Lawton –The Wall
Street Journal
December 17, 2003
Groups Seek Nutrition Labels As Distillers Go
Low Carb;
The Surprise About Guinness
In a world where it's OK for dieters to load up on bacon and hamburgers, what's so bad about a cocktail?
Not much at all, according to the liquor industry. In
an effort to cash in on the popularity of trendy low-carb diets like Atkins,
makers of vodka, whiskey, and other hard liquors are starting to pitch their
products as low-carb and diet-friendly, following the success of a
low-carbohydrate campaign this year by Michelob Ultra beer.
In fact, looks can be deceiving and there can be some
surprisingly low-carb and low-calorie drinks behind the bar. Guinness, for
instance, with its thick consistency and chocolate-cake color, is likely to be
one of the first beers carb-conscious drinkers would cut out. In fact, it has
only 10 grams of carbs and 125 calories per 12 ounces -- fewer carbs than
Budweiser, Coors and Corona. (The reason is, Guinness contains less alcohol.)
Other products that look more virtuous, such as the clear-colored malt beverage
Smirnoff Ice, are carb-laden. A 12 oz. serving of the trendy brew has 32 grams
of carbs and 228 calories, or about the same as a baked apple pie from
McDonald's. Same for drinkers of non-alcoholic beers, which can carry more than
14 grams of carbs per 12 ounces.
Tuesday, consumer advocacy groups launched a campaign
to urge liquor companies to put more nutritional information on their
packaging, saying current labeling rules are haphazard and hard to decipher.
Two major groups, the Center for Science in the Public Interest and the
National Consumers League, petitioned the federal government to require uniform
labeling for liquor much like what's already required on food-product
packaging.
The proposed labels would include information on
alcohol content, serving sizes, calories and ingredients. Currently, the
government has widely varying rules for different products -- low-carb and
light beer must list calorie content, for instance, but wine, spirits and
regular beers don't have to.
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"People are unaware of the calories and ingredients,
and don't know how to compare between types of beverages," said George
Hacker of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Brewers and distillers
including Anheuser-Busch and Diageo said they are still evaluating the
proposal.
The low-carb, high-protein dieting trend should be
terrific news for liquor makers: Rum, vodka, gin, whisky and tequila contain no
carbs or fat at all, and never have. Still, 63% of consumers incorrectly
believe wine and beer are lower in carbs than spirits, according to a study by
Ipsos Public Affairs.
All of this has triggered a wave of new marketing
campaigns. Diageo, which makes Captain Morgan Original Spiced rum and Johnnie
Walker, is now urging bartenders to promote holiday-themed drinks such as a
Johnnie Walker Red Label and Ginger, a mix of scotch and diet ginger ale that
clocks in at 96 calories, about the same as three rice cakes.
What's In Your Drink?
See chart below depicting total carbohydrates,
calories and fat in various types of alcohol. |
Allied Domecq, which makes Kahlua, is also targeting
barkeepers and encouraging them to, for example, offer "skinny" White
Russians made with skim milk instead of regular milk. It's trying to stir up
buzz by sponsoring parties at the offices of Hollywood producers and
publicists, as well as some hip hair salons. The drink has roughly half the
calories (229) and two-thirds the carbs (18) of a normal White Russian.
Phillips Distilling recently launched a low-carb
campaign for its UV vodka and is telling distributors to cross-market it with
products like Crystal Light sugar-free lemonade. And Bacardi plans to dust off
some of its old advertising from dieting crazes of yore. An 1984 print ad, for
example, asks which has more calories: five ounces of white wine, or a five-ounce
Bacardi and diet Coke. (Answer: The rum drink, 66 calories, wine, 121.)
limit her sugar and carbs. She also dilutes red wine with sparkling water to make
sparkling wine. "It's a brilliant way to minimize the carbs, but still get
the same flavor you desire."
Simple moderation is the best approach, says Stacey
Snelling, a professor and registered dietitian for American University in
Washington, D.C. When students ask if they can freely drink low-carb beer
without getting a beer belly, she warns that switching to a low-carb beer from
most light beers saves just 10 calories. "There are still alcohol calories
in low-carb beer, and alcohol calories are stored as fat," she says.
It's tough to make an argument that a bar is a good
place to maintain a diet. Consider the final pitfall: Mindlessly grazing the
bar snacks. Three handfuls of mixed nuts can silently harbor a whopping 500
calories, or fully a quarter of the Food and Drug Administration's guidelines
for average daily requirement.
2. Thanks to Cable, Liquor Ads Find a TV Audience
By Stuart Elliott – New York
Times
December 15, 2003
NEW YORK -- Almost two years ago,
an experiment to allow American liquor marketers access to the biggest, most
powerful advertising medium of all - national broadcast network television -
ended in acrimony. Since then, those advertisers have pieced together an
alternative, virtual TV network, enabling them to expose consumers to more
pitches for vodka, gin and whiskey than ever before.
Commercials for distilled spirits,
once relegated to the fringes of the television landscape, now appear on two
dozen national cable networks from AMC to WE, more than 140 local cable systems
and 420 local broadcast stations. That patchwork network lets the liquor marketers
take advantage of the benefits of selling on television - primarily the ability
to reach large numbers of consumers quickly and frequently - even if its most
potent form is barred to them.
This month, for instance, the VH1 cable
network, owned by Viacom, started running spots for distilled spirits, and
several liquor brands like Grey Goose vodka introduced their first commercials
with holiday themes. The Jim Beam Brands Company division of Fortune Brands is
considering a cable version of its print and radio "Drink smart"
campaign, encouraging responsible drinking, which could begin running as soon
as the first quarter of the new year. And Vin & Sprit A.B., the Swedish
maker of Absolut vodka, is planning TV spots for a new, higher-priced brand,
Level vodka, to come out in 2004.
"Even with everyone
frightened about the decline of television as an advertising medium, there's
still something about its communication values that are hard to beat,"
said Adam Stagliano, president at Brand Architecture International in New York.
"Television has sight, sound
and motion, and the ability to target an audience," said Mr. Stagliano,
whose agency created for G1 Worldwide, a division of the TBWA Worldwide unit of
the Omnicom Group, the first American television commercials for Pernod
Ricard's Chivas Regal Scotch whiskey. The spots have been running since October
on cable networks like Bloomberg, FX and Outdoor Life.
"And TV is great for what's
called top-of-mind awareness," Mr. Stagliano said. This quality, highly
prized by marketers, means that when consumers are asked in surveys to name a
specific brand of, say, Scotch whiskey, they reply "Chivas Regal"
without prompting.
By now, viewers ought to be able
to demonstrate awareness of a lengthy list of distilled-spirits brands as a
result of the hundreds of spots that run each week for products that in
addition to Chivas Regal include gins like Bombay Sapphire; rums like Bacardi
and Captain Morgan; vodkas like Finlandia, Grey Goose and Smirnoff; whiskeys
like Crown Royal and Jack Daniel's; and liqueurs like Baileys, Disaronno,
Kahlúa and Southern Comfort.
In most instances, the TV spots
are supplementing traditional media schedules for liquor brands dominated by
print and outdoor advertising, though in some cases television - especially
spots on hit cable series like "Nip/Tuck," "Queer Eye for the
Straight Guy" and "Trading Spaces" - is supplanting other media
choices.
"At this point, liquor ads
have saturated cable," said George A. Hacker, director for the Alcohol
Policies Project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in
Washington, who has long fought against such commercials because of fears that
they are more visible to children than print ads and glamorize drinking more.
"We're satisfied that at
least the barrier against broadcast remains, but it's very hard to have a big
enough thumb in the dike," he added. "They're aggressively
advertising on cable, and we have more limited legal remedies there." That
is because broadcast networks are more stringently monitored by federal
regulators.
It was the harsh outcries from
those regulators, along with advocacy organizations like Mr. Hacker's, members
of Congress and the American Medical Association, that forced a premature end
to the experiment by one big broadcaster, the NBC division of the General
Electric Company, to run commercials for hard liquor.
For decades, the American liquor
industry had adhered to voluntary bans on the advertising of its products on
radio (since 1936) and television (since 1948), even though its counterparts
overseas have long run such spots. In 1996, after Seagram began defying the
ban, it was lifted, but TV spots were still rare because the big broadcast
networks - ABC, CBS and Fox, along with NBC - kept intact their policies
against accepting ads for distilled spirits.
That changed on Dec. 15, 2001,
when NBC ran a spot sponsored by Diageo on behalf of Smirnoff, which promoted
designating a driver before going out to drink. It was the first step in a long
test that would not have allowed commercials explicitly devoted to selling
Smirnoff or other Diageo brands until April 2002. But a month before that, NBC
ended the experiment, citing fierce opposition. (Now that NBC owns Bravo, said
Cory Shields, a spokesman for NBC in New York, "whether or not Bravo
continues to take liquor advertising is under review," though the review
is expected to conclude with the policy intact.)
The brief foray of liquor onto a
stalwart of broadcasting emboldened Madison Avenue.
3. Wine Importers
Chafe at New Anti-terror Law
San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, 2003
Call for documents may be difficult for a unique business
SAN FRANCISCO -- The new
Bioterrorism Act rules are inconvenient for most food and beverage companies,
but they could wreak havoc in the esoteric world of collectible wines.
If enacted as written,
the Food and Drug Administration rules could drive up prices and make some rare
wines virtually impossible to find. Mannie Berk, a Sonoma importer who is
lobbying on the issue, estimates that $200 million to $300 million in annual
imports could be barred from the United States.
Berk and other
importers are banding together to fight the regulations in Washington and to
share information that will allow them to comply.
The problem lies in
the prior-notification form that must be submitted with every imported
comestibles shipment. The form requires a registration number assigned by the
FDA to each food and beverage producer.
Overseas wineries in
many cases will provide the number only to their official importer, leaving
other importers out of the action.
For most comestibles,
this is not a problem because most foodstuffs are purchased and consumed soon
after they are made.
Wine, however, can
last for decades and change hands many times. A network of brokers and
importers exists in the United States and overseas to match collectors with
specific wines they want to add to their cellars. These sales happen on what is
called the "gray market" or "parallel market."
Berk, the owner of
Rare Wine Co. in Sonoma, says the rule puts 25 percent of his business at risk.
Adventures in Wine,
one of the area's largest gray-market importers, could lose one-third of its $6
million in annual revenues, owner Merrick Dowson says. "I'd have to lay
off two or three people in my staff of 10, maybe more," says Dowson, whose
company imports wine for, among other places, San Francisco's popular Wine Club
store on Harrison Street.
Berk and other
importers in the California Fine Wine Alliance are submitting comments to the
FDA asking for changes. They are also creating a database of registration
numbers to share among importers in case the regulation goes into effect as
written.
4. R.I.
Considers Cutting Liquor-Sale Hours
By Stephen Elliott– The
Dispatch
December 14, 2003
ROCK ISLAND -- A Rock Island police
officer was called to the Stop and Save convenience store at 1501 7th Ave.,
shortly before 2 a.m. on Dec. 4.
The parking lot was filling with
people, several people were inside and the clerk might need help if there was
trouble.
The officer dispersed the crowd
and went on to his next call. The patrolman was lucky that night.
``If a policeman is not there, it
usually ends up in a fight,'' Rock Island Police Sgt. J. Michael Sponsler said.
``If the officer is there, most people will simply move on.''
Rock Island convenience stores can
sell liquor until 1 a.m., or 3 a.m. if they're approved for extended hours.
That's later than any other city in the immediate area, and the city council
has asked attorneys to draft an ordinance eliminating extended hours.
The city has 20 convenience
stores, and nine have extended hours.
Sometimes, late night - or early
morning - calls to convenience stores have involved seven to 10 officers
dealing with a crowd of 50 to 75 people. Police also are called to deal with
thefts, shots fired and drug activity at convenience stores.
``This situation only seems to
happen a couple or a few times a year, but even one time could lead to an
officer getting seriously hurt,'' Sgt. Sponsler said.
In a report to the city council
last Monday, Sgt. Sponsler said stores that have extended hours call for police
aid more than other stores.
``One very serious concern I have
for our department and officers handling these calls is the serious nature of
the call and the amount of manpower it takes to get the situation under
control,'' he said.
Police Chief Terry Dove said
extended liquor-store hours also are hard on neighbors around the businesses.
``For residents living nearby, you have people parking in the driveways. You have
trash and litter. Quality of life is a very important issue.''
Joe DePaepe, owner of four Mother
Hubbard's Cupboard stores in Rock Island that have extended hours, is not in
favor of the proposal to cut those hours.
``It's not going to accomplish much,
except erode some of the traffic at our stores,'' he said. ``The plight of the
convenience store is we're fighting for our lives. We're fighting to stay open.
``When cigarettes went up to $4 a
carton on the Illinois side, business went to the Iowa side. We're down about
30 percent on gas sales this year, because everybody's crossing the river. Gas
(in Iowa) is cheaper, too.''
Mr. DePaepe said the city should
go after the stores that have problems instead of all stores with extended
hours. ``Take care of the problem stores, but don't blanket everything.''
Davenport Police Capt. David
Struckman said Davenport convenience stores can sell liquor until 2 a.m. He
said many bars have ``last call'' about 1:30 a.m., which means some customers
head for a convenience store to get more liquor before the 2 a.m. closing.
There have been some problems at
convenience stores with late-night liquor sales, he said. ``When you have
people in mass sometimes like that in a parking lot, it might be a fight that
carried over from a bar. It's a natural meeting place.''
Sgt. Sponsler told the Rock Island
council that convenience stores have, for the most part, cooperated with police
in trying to curb late-night incidents.
He cited the Stop and Shop as one
of the cooperative ones. ``Now, at about 2:20 to 2:30 a.m., the store
completely shuts down to avoid the tavern- closing crowd that used to stop at
this location.
``The same thing happened several
years ago with the Kwik Shop at 2400 7th Ave. They encountered continual
serious problems with the tavern-closing crowds.''
He said police worked with store
management to restructure hours, which eliminated most of the problems.
Calls to Stop and Shop and Kwik
Shop for comment for this article were not returned.
In 1996, Mr. DePaepe was part of a
lawsuit filed against the city of Moline which claimed that making gasoline and
oil stations ineligible for liquor licenses was unconstitutional. Moline agreed
to lift the ban in 1997 before the case was heard in court.
``They're (people who want
alcohol) still going to get it somewhere,'' Mr. DePaepe said. ``If they want
beer at 1:30 a.m., they'll get it. It will just be in some other city. There's
sales tax from that.
``Cigarettes, pop. They may buy that
at the same time. That's also going to go away.''
The bulk retailer challenges state liquor
restrictions.
By Roger Downey - Seattle Weekly
December 18, 2003
SEATTLE, WA -- WASHINGTON STATE'S rigid system of
control over pricing, distribution, and sale of alcoholic beverages has
survived nearly 70 years without significant challenge. That challenge finally
came just before Labor Day, when attorneys for discount-retailing behemoth
Costco, which is headquartered in Issaquah, threatened to take the state to
federal court, charging that Washington's elaborate three-tiered alcohol
marketing system violates the venerable Sherman Antitrust Act, and demanding
that the state promptly dismantle offending parts of the system or face
"expensive litigation."
When you read Costco's complaint, you can't help
wondering why it's taken so long for someone to force the state's hand. The
reason appears to be not that everybody was content with the system, but only
because no one was big enough or determined enough to challenge it. As one of
the Forbes top 50 American corporations, Costco is big enough and stands to
benefit significantly if the law is changed.
It's only recently that the legal odds tipped in
Costco's favor. For a long time after repeal of Prohibition, courts bent over
backward to support the states' right to regulate alcohol. That began to change
in 1980, when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with some California liquor
distributors that there are limits to a state's right to interfere with
business in the name of the 21st Amendment.
THERE'S NO ARGUMENT that Washington's law interferes
with free competition where alcohol is concerned. Alcoholic beverage
wholesalers have to post their prices publicly where the competition can see
them and are allowed to change prices once a month at most. They're forbidden
to offer discounts for volume buyers, or sell a consignment on credit to
sweeten the deal. Out-of-state producers can't ship their wares directly to
retailers but are required to market them through "licensed
distributors," thereby increasing their cost to consumers.
That last requirement appears to be what made Costco
decide to challenge the state system, if necessary, in federal court. Costco's
business model is based on buying in massive bulk, directly from producers, and
distributing to its "warehouse" stores through its own gigantic and
efficient "cross-docking" facilities. That brings down the price to
Costco shoppers for items from mayo to mattresses. Costco wants to offer the
same price break on wine.
If the state's requirement that wine must pass
through the hands of an independent distributor were set aside, Costco wine
customers would benefit. But the change might quickly put a lot of distributors
out of business. It's the mandated markup they earn on high- volume,
mass-market beers and wines like those stocked by Costco (and supermarket
chains) that makes them profitable. Indeed, owning a beer or wine distributorship
in Washington state is considered a license to coin money, one to be jealously
kept in the family and handed down through the generations.
Washington's alcohol distribution system is described
as "three-tier," with producers and consumers as the outside tiers
and distributorships at the center, holding the sandwich together. If Costco
can persuade the courts that forcing it to buy through distributors is
anticompetitive and results in higher prices to the consumer, the rationale for
the whole system collapses.
FEDERAL CASE LAW offers the state one fallback
position to defend the system: States are permitted to fix prices and control
markets only as long as they actively supervise the results of their
regulations to ensure that they aren't abused. But the agency in charge of
enforcing Washington's system, the Liquor Control Board, isn't set up to do
much in the way of supervising the effects of its regulations, and, at least
during the reign of Gov. Gary Locke, its governing commission has been less concerned
with oversight than providing political sinecures for allies of the governor.
Costco's letter to the state attorney general points
out that under the present system, a number of questionable practices have been
allowed to develop over the years, including distributors holding de facto
monopolies over some popular products in one region of the state while a
competing product is handled by a different distributor in another region.
Whether the practice is due to tacit agreements between distributors or not, it
obviously limits buyers' ability to choose between equivalent products on the
basis of price: If the wine you want isn't distributed in your county, you take
what you can get, at the price asked.
On Monday, Dec. 1, lawyers for the state and Costco
and representatives of the liquor commission met for the first time to explore
the legal landscape dividing the parties. Costco's lawyers seem almost
arrogantly sure of their ground. In their letter to the attorney general's
office on Aug. 29, they invited the AG to join with them should litigation
become necessary, leaving the liquor commission to hire its own lawyers. If
progress isn't made, litigation could ensue as soon as January.
