Western Pennsylvanians venture out as curbside liquor pickup expands

Cars, SUVs and pickups pulled up to a Fine Wines & Good Spirits store in Penn Hills on Monday as residents scrambled to purchase liquor with the opening of most state stores across Pennsylvania for curbside delivery.

Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board spokesman Shawn Kelly said the agency last week opened 176 of more than 600 stores for curbside pickup as a pilot program. On Monday, the state expanded to 565 stores. Orders are limited to six bottles per person.

John Clark of Lower Burrell said it took him 30 to 45 minutes to get in his order for six bottles of vodka.

“Hopefully, they’ll be open by the time I need to (buy) again,” he said.

Clark said he tried phoning six different stores before getting through to Penn Hills, but it was better than his past attempts.

“It was rough last week,” he said. “They didn’t have enough places yet.”

Gov. Tom Wolf ordered the stores closed March 17. Online-only sales started April 1. The PLCB widely was criticized for lengthy delays that prevented potential customers from logging in and placing an order.

When the state opened 176 stores April 20 under the curbside pickup program, customers complained about not being able to reach the stores because of near-continuous busy signals.

Kelly had yet to hear back from stores Monday and could not provide a status update on the sales.

“The initial rollout a week ago was kind of like a pilot program,” he said. “We had never done curbside delivery before, so we had to get a program in place. We were able to get the process in place and we tweaked it to make it better for our customers and our staff. Once we felt comfortable enough, we rolled it out to the rest of the stores.”

Customers at a store in Ross were able to get their alcohol relatively quickly.

“I was very surprised to drive up and see no one here,” Marlene Graham said, adding it was probably because more stores had opened.

“I think that probably cut down on the amount of people that are going to one particular store that’s open,” said Graham, 67, of Hampton.

Graham said she liked the idea of curbside pickup. She said officials should have thought of it before they decided to close the stores.

“To take somebody’s booze away from them … it’s like putting you in a cell without any food or drink, to some people,” Graham said. “I just like a glass of wine in the evening before I have my dinner, just to relax.”

India Archie, 37, of Pittsburgh’s North Side, said her sister placed her order for her because she was working. She showed off her haul: large bottles of tequila and brandy.

“The number’s always busy all day … and you can’t order online cause it says ‘currently unavailable’ for some weird reason,” Archie said. “But (my sister) finally got through. We were successful, so we’re going to be drinking Jose tonight, baby!”

A steady stream of vehicles pulled up to a store in Aliquippa. Tatiana Jones, 23, of Rochester said she got through to the store on her first call. She was happy to score a bottle of vodka.

“I just got lucky,” she said. “This is just to get me through being quarantined. Every day is like a Friday or Saturday. Everybody’s home cooking and drinking.”

Delivery happened quickly Monday in Greensburg. A masked employee shuttled a few bags into a waiting black car parked in one of three reserved spots outside the store on Harrison Avenue.

About 10 minutes later, a white SUV parked outside the store and, about a minute later, drove away after picking up an order.