Follow-up: Convenience store wine’s surge in popularity

Is wine at convenience stores part of a larger, and possibly important change, in the way we buy wine?

This month’s post detailing the surge in wine sales at convenience stores brought a variety of responses:

• A reader said a friend bought a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, the $40 Champagne, to go with his takeout fried chicken at a New Orleans convenience store. The wine was not only chilled, but cost less than at a leading national chain.

• Another reported that a local brewery had sampled its $12 beer at a Virginia convenience store, and that the beer was the store’s second most purchased after Bud Light. “It wouldn’t shock me if winery partnerships are next,” he emailed.

• Dallas’ Corner Stop offers almost 60 wines for delivery. Yes, some of them are Barefoot and some of the prices are ridiculous, but they include a high-end Orin Swift Napa cabernet sauvignon. Talk about surreal.

In other words, something important is going on here, though I can’t begin to figure out what it is. Traditionally, discerning wine drinkers never bought anything at a convenience store unless it was chips and a soft drink. But as reported here in the spring, sales of high-end Champagnes, including Moet and Chandon, more than doubled in one survey of independent corner retailers in 2020.

I’ve talked about this with a variety of wine business types, and they’re not quite sure what’s going on, either. Some of it, almost certainly, is generational – younger consumers don’t have the antipathy towards 7-Eleven and the like that their parents and grandparents do. And some of it can be attributed to business-savvy operators, who see wine as a way to attract more and different customers.

But I also wonder: As wine has become more complicated, more snobby, and more expensive over the past decade, are convenience stores part of the antidote? They don’t sell orange wine or natural wine or pet nat or any other wine geek trend; just national brands that are easy and convenient to buy.

And is that such a bad thing?

Photo: “First diaper” by goldberg is licensed under CC BY 2.0