To the editor:
I am writing to you regarding the pending Select Board vote to grant a cost-free beer and wine license to the Price Chopper grocery supermarket on Stockbridge Road because there is a lot more at stake than the matter of a little bit more convenience for customers of Price Chopper; it has much more to do with the fabric of Great Barrington’s business community and the long-term well-being of our local economy.
I am not in favor of this for a variety of reasons that take into account the health of the local Great Barrington economy, the stated mission of the Town’s governing body over the last 25 years, the on-the-record campaign-platform position of existing members of the Select Board with respect to economic development in this town, demographic trends, the current nature of the local market for beer, wine and liquor, the posturing and misrepresentation being peddled by Price Chopper in their pursuit of this license, and the disinformation circulating in local media, and “on the street,” regarding this issue.
Let me take these talking points one-at-a-time:
1) The health of the local economy
Great Barrington is a small town with a population of roughly 7,000. The total population of Great Barrington and the surrounding communities of Stockbridge, West Stockbridge, Sheffield, Egremont and Alford is 15,000. The population here, and throughout Berkshire County has been in decline for decades, and the demographic projections are that the population will stabilize at these levels, or decline slightly over time. This is not a “growth” community, or market, for businesses. The overall growth of most local industries and commercial sectors comes more from inflation than it does from market expansion, and, therefore, there is very little opportunity to earn market share in an expanding market in any commercial sector. New competitors in existing commercial sectors will only take market share from other existing businesses in that sector.
Until roughly 20 years ago most business and commercial sectors in Great Barrington were disaggregated. In any given sector there were several independent operators, and there was healthy competition and plenty of choice for consumers. Since then, however, the supermarkets in this town, and in many other communities, have tried to become aggregators that consolidate more and more business sectors unrelated to their core purpose into their product portfolio in order to choke out smaller, independent, locally-owned businesses by playing on a field that is not level because of their scale, and purchasing power. They buy more goods at wholesale at better prices than the small operators can negotiate, offer the goods at lower retail prices to customers, eventually drive the small players out of existence forever, and then, having achieved their end game of eliminating all competition, permanently raise prices to levels that are higher than they were when there was healthy competition. There are very few examples, either in textbook theory, or in real economies, large or small, where aggregation has led to positive outcomes.
In Great Barrington we have several examples of how this behavior by our two large supermarkets has destroyed the competitive landscape, eliminated all independent players, and established a powerful duopoly that completely controls the local market for goods — florists and pharmacies are two examples.
Yes, currently, our economy is healthy and thriving, but it is also as fragile and susceptible to disruption as any small rural community’s economy can be. Forty years ago it was a wreck, with honky tonk bars and drunken barroom brawls breaking out among inebriated bikers on Railroad Street. It took a commitment to repairing its core, and to protecting its small businesses, to resurrect it.
2) Town mission and Selectboard member campaign platforms
Over the last 30 years Great Barrington has risen from being a slightly down-and-out, rough-and-tumble, former mill town to becoming a thriving local economy that has risen on the back of small, locally-owned businesses and a successful healthcare sector built around the very fortunate fact that we have an excellent medical facility. The primary catalyst for this renaissance in Great Barrington was the establishment of the Main Street Action Association in 1992 that paved the way for the construction of The Triplex movie theater complex, and the general revitalization of the downtown area with the overriding objective of “promoting, recruiting, and PROTECTING locally-owned, independent small businesses.” It was the first stage of the very successful rebirth and ascendance of Great Barrington and its economy.
In fact, 20 years later, in the Great Barrington Community Master Plan, drafted and adopted in October 2013, in a section titled “Economic transition demands flexibility and imagination,” the town acknowledged that, “The quality of life here, combining nature, history and culture, attracts a mobile skilled workforce. Many work creatively and independently. Our diversity of owner-operated (i.e. small and independent) businesses is a more resilient employment base than one or two large companies would be…The country atmosphere and small town setting must be preserved, enhanced and marketed.”
It is clear, in communities all over this country, and in a nearby city like Pittsfield, that when you cater to big business, and pull commercial activity away from small businesses in the heart of a town’s commercial and residential areas, and out to the periphery of a community, and concentrate it in the hands of large enterprises, you eventually kill the economic vitality of that town.
Several current members of the Great Barrington Select Board ran for office on policy platforms that included protecting small business, and strict management of the growing presence of “big-box” retailers.
As they grow and expand their products and services into commercial sectors not directly connected to grocery, supermarkets like Big Y and Price Chopper become “big-box” retailers and behave in predatory ways that stifle and kill local small business.
If Price Chopper, and the Golub Corporation, succeed in obtaining this license, this is exactly what they and Big Y will be able to do to the beer, wine and liquor business in this town. In the process they will run these departments in their stores, as Big Y does now, with minimal staff and supervision, which will cause Great Barrington to lose dozens of decent, well-paying jobs that are currently held at the independent liquor stores.
This inevitable outcome is in complete conflict with the stated mission of our town.
3) The local beer, wine and liquor market landscape in Great Barrington
Great Barrington currently has 11 active licenses for the retail sale of either beer and wine only, or beer, wine and alcohol.
The town already has a much higher per-capita number of these retail licenses that any other town, large or small, in the Commonwealth, and significantly more than the State Legislature recommends.
Nevertheless, there is a very adequate geographic spread of the package stores and other establishments selling beer, wine and alcohol so that members of the population from all residential areas of the town, including the Village of Housatonic, have two or three choices within an 8-minute drive of their home, with the possible exception of residents located east of town in areas accessed by Route 23, Lake Buel Road and Route 183 for whom the drive might be 10 minutes.
The town, in general, is not “starved” for access to establishments that sell beer, wine and/or liquor, nor is any particular neighborhood, or area of town.
There is more than adequate choice, and there is a healthy balance of competition in a stable, but not growing, market. We do not need another establishment selling beer, wine, and liquor.
4) The campaign for a license by Price Chopper
On their own web site, Price Chopper, Market 32 and The Golub Corporation claim the following, “We exist to help people feed and care for themselves and their families.” There is no part of that noble mission that should, or must, include selling beer and wine, and eventually alcohol, to their treasured customer base, and the same was always true for Big Y.
Price Chopper is a multi-state enterprise with $4.6 billion in annual revenue. They currently operate 130 stores in 6 eastern states. The vast majority of their stores still operate under the Price Chopper banner, not Market 32, their newer brand that they have marketed as an upscale option to the Price Chopper brand. In fact, in their home state of New York, 51 of their 79 locations, or 65 percent, operate as Price Chopper. They operate 15 locations in Massachusetts where they have the same distribution of Price Chopper vs. Market 32 brand stores. Twelve percent of their total number of store locations are in Massachusetts. The Great Barrington location is three fourths of one percent of all their locations, and, by extrapolation, probably represents no more than 1 percent of their total corporate revenue.
The future of Price Chopper, and its parent company the Golub Corporation of Schenectady, N.Y., is not dependent on the Great Barrington location, and the lack of a wine and beer (and eventually a full license including liquor sales) is not an existential threat to either The Golub Corporation or the Great Barrington location.
Price Chopper has existed as a successful grocery supermarket in Great Barrington for more than 30 years. If they had not been successful, they would have closed up shop a long time ago. They are the only large, full-service grocery supermarket on the north side of Great Barrington, and in the vicinity of the Village of Housatonic, so they operate without any competition in their immediate vicinity, as opposed to Big Y which directly competes, in all of their product segments, with Guido’s next door, and The Co-Op Market located 1/2-mile away in the downtown business district. Despite what they claim, as a grocery store/supermarket the Price Chopper supermarket operates on a much more advantageous playing field than Big Y. The Great Barrington Price Chopper is the closest supermarket choice for at least half of the combined population of Great Barrington and the surrounding communities of Alford, Stockbridge, West Stockbridge, Monterey, New Marlborough, and parts of Otis.
It is absurd for the Golub Corporation to try to peddle the notion that, because they cannot buy beer, wine and liquor, their existing grocery customers would, or are, in large scale, actually driving all the way through, or around, the center of Great Barrington, and passing by Aberdale’s, Plaza Package, Domaney’s, or even Gorham & Norton to do their shopping for both groceries and wine, beer and/or liquor at Big Y instead of simply, and much more conveniently, shopping for groceries at Price Chopper and stopping at one of the aforementioned sellers of beer, wine and liquor either on their way out from, or back to, their homes. And it is silly for any individual to buy into that argument.
By all accounts, since the time that Big Y purchased an existing beer and wine license and incorporated the operations of another existing business into their store, The Golub Corporation has deliberately under-staffed, under-resourced, and wantonly neglected the Great Barrington location in an attempt to create the illusion that their Price Chopper cannot successfully compete with another business that has an entirely different location, a different geographically-located customer base, and more competition in its immediate vicinity.
This argument is vapid and unsubstantiated. If the Great Barrington Big Y store, with its liquor license, occupied the space where Tractor Supply is — in the same shopping mall as Price Chopper — the Golub Corporation might have a valid argument. As things stand right now their argument does not hold a drop of water.
The Great Barrington Price Chopper location, or a newfangled Market 32 supermarket without a beer and wine (and eventually a full liquor) license, has no excuse not to thrive and be successful as a grocery supermarket. Poor store and corporate management are deliberately trying to make it appear that it cannot survive. The Golub Corporation has the resources, and the expertise, to upgrade the Great Barrington location to a Market 32 supermarket with no beer, wine (and liquor) license if they so desire. The Golub Corporation already operates Market 32 stores that do not have beer, wine or alcohol licenses in communities throughout their network like Torrington, Conn., and Guilderland, Utica and Rome, N.Y.
For some reason, with two Market 32 locations with full liquor licenses already operating in southern Berkshire County, Golub Corporation is insisting that it needs one more full liquor license in southern Berkshire County in order to justify staying in Great Barrington. Three full licenses would represent one-third of all the licenses they are permitted to have in the entire Commonwealth, and they would be located in one of the least-densely-populated counties of Massachusetts where there has been a declining population for the last 30-40 years. Additionally, the other two locations — Pittsfield and “Lenox,” which is more accurately an additional Pittsfield location than it is a Lenox one, serve a combined population of 60,000 – 4 times the population of Great Barrington and its surrounding communities, and they are in locations where there is not nearly as much nearby access to independent wine, bar and liquor stores.
Whether you consider this issue from the point of view of Price Chopper as a business, or that of their customer base, this is much more a case of want than it is one of need. It is akin to a teenager whose parents give him, or her, a fully-loaded Buick, but he, or she, is not satisfied because their friend has a Cadillac, and they want to convince their parents that they won’t be liked as much by their peers because of this disparity.
In a recent opinion piece in The Berkshire Edge, Peter Most claimed that, “after the March 2023 unsatisfactory vote, Golub took away the new Market 32 shopping carts (from the Great Barrington store), returning in their stead those metal carts with the squeaky wheels that go left when you want them to go right.”
If that is, indeed, the case, it can only be regarded as a petty, petulant, and childish response by a corporation that is trying to convince this town that it has the institutional maturity to manage the sale of alcoholic products, and all of its inherent pitfalls, at any of their 130 locations, let alone their Great Barrington one.
In his opinion piece Mr. Most also wrote glowingly about how pretty his friend, who was visiting The Berkshires, thought the “Lenox” Market 32 looked on its exterior, BUT, on a more substantive and relevant level, he conveniently failed to discuss the fact that the “Lenox” property has struggled over the last year to cope with the theft of alcoholic products totaling in excess of $75,000, and that its management had to request the assistance of local law enforcement to address this problem at the same time that they instructed their own staff to look the other way and not confront the thieves.
That adds up to a lot of very compelling reasons why there should be no logical basis on which to grant Price Chopper a license in Great Barrington.
Thank you for your time.
Stephen Donaldson
Great Barrington
