City officials are initially saying no to Jewel-Osco's request to sell liquor at its Morris store.
"I like Jewel, I shop at Jewel. But my mind is made up on it. I've got to be honest with you guys," said Alderman Drew Muffler, member of the Judiciary and License Committee, which met Wednesday to discuss the request.
Muffler and Chairman Barry Aldrich voted against the request to amend the city's liquor license ordinance to allow Jewel to sell liquor. Alderman Don Hansen passed because he owns a restaurant outside of town that carries a packaged liquor license.
Muffler and Aldrich felt allowing Jewel a liquor license could hurt the city's three local liquor stores. Currently, the city only allows stores to sell liquor when 70 percent of their total sales comes from liquor sales. Therefore, gas stations, convenient stores and grocery stores do not qualify.
The city heard a request this week from two local residents who would like to open another liquor store, which would make four liquor stores in town.
"Jewel is going to be OK without a liquor store," Muffler said. "But would these people be OK with Jewel having a liquor store?"
He continued to says that local liquor stores support both full-time and part-time employees, and multiple families rely on the stores to support them.
Constance Zaio of Jewel-Osco said Morris is one of two stores it has in Illinois that do not sell liquor. The other is located in a dry area where liquor is not sold at all.
Like everyone else, Jewel has seen decreases in sales with the state of the economy and the increase in competition. They need to increase ways of bringing people into the Morris store, and selling alcohol would do that, she said.
"Other communities have independent liquor stores that we're in and we don't put them out of business," Zaio said.
Muffler later asked if Jewel would hire on more staff if it was granted the license. This would depend on if liquor sales demanded it, another Jewel representative said.
Mayor Richard Kopczick added that the jobs would not equal the amount of jobs lost if one or more of the city's local stores closed.
"It's not just jobs, it's careers. In this kind of economy, I have my reservations," Muffler said.
Hansen argued that Jewel has to stay as competitive as any other business in this economy.
"If they don't continue to serve new markets they probably won't be around forever," he said. "So I disagree they won't lose anything (by not selling liquor.)"
Morris customers have been requesting alcohol be sold at the store, she said, because Jewel-Osco is known for one-stop-shopping.
The store has put out signature sheets asking customers, who volunteer to sign it, whether they would like liquor sold at the location. The majority have said yes.
Jewel representatives did not have exact statistics available from the signature sheets, but will provide them to committee members.
Zaio told the committee about Jewel's many security components to make sure liquor is being sold properly, including internal training, register software that requires a birth date before liquor can be rung up and a time-sensitive system that will not allow alcohol to be purchased even one minute before or after the community's liquor sale times.
She said that, in previous meetings, Kopczick expressed to her there is a concern if Jewel was granted a license, Walgreens, Walmart, Aldi and the local gas stations would also request one.
Zaio's suggestion was the city could put a limit on the license that requires an establishment to be at least 50,000-square-feet, like Wheaton does.
"If we look at creating a restriction on square-footage, there better be more than one place with that square-footage ...," said Kopczick, continuing that the city cannot discriminate by offering a square-footage that only one of the city's grocery stores meets.
The committee did not send a recommendation to council, but did vote against changing the city's ordinance.
Muffler wants to canvas the rest of the council on their thoughts, he said, and could bring it back up if they are open to it. In the meantime, Zaio is getting statistics from the Morris Jewel's survey to the city.