The Mississippi Department of Revenue (DOR) announced last Friday that it'll suspend orders of alcohol from customers from the state-owned warehouse until July 20.
The Alcohol Beverage Control division said it's experienced "unprecedented growth in its liquor orders over the last four months," with a 29 percent increase in case sales. The ABC says the warehouse has shipped 1.3 million cases of wine spirits during that time frame, with orders taking an average of one week to deliver. That's an additional 300,000 cases as compared to numbers from the same period last year.
Normally, according to the DOR, it takes liquor orders about one to two days within the order date to arrive.
The state's 211,000 square foot warehouse handles about three million cases of wine and spirits annually and has a capacity of 17,000 cases. The DOR says it has about 100,000 cases in the system waiting to be delivered and will use the pause to get the orders out before it resumes taking orders again on July 20.
The ABC said it's added two overtime days in April, May and June for a total of six additional shifts for both the day and night crews.
Mississippi is one of 17 control states, which means that a state agency controls the sale of alcohol by functioning as a wholesaler. The state Department of Revenue’s Alcohol Beverage Control division serves as the state’s wholesaler for wine and liquor, using a contractor to ship products to customers.
Change might be on the way for the state-owned warehouse. Senate Bill 2807 was signed into law by Gov. Tate Reeves and created a study commission to determine whether to transition the state’s distribution warehouse to a public/private corporation like the one chartered to run the state’s lottery.
Legislators will have to name the commission’s 13 members by July 31.
