Over the past 30 years, JD’s Liquor store owner and manager Bill Kadourra has seen wine sales at his Broad Street shop ebb and flow – a 3 percent dip in sales one year might lead to a 5 percent rise in sales the next.
But it wasn’t until local residents voted to allow grocery outlets in the area to begin selling wine that Kadourra saw a sharp drop in the numbers. In the less than two years that grocers have been selling wine, JD’s Liquor has seen a 63 percent decrease in wine sales, he said.
Now, empty shelves line one whole side of the store where boxes and jugs of wine used to sit. Wines have been consolidated onto other shelves, and 30 racks of wine in the middle of the store have been scaled down to just 16.
“I’ve shrunk it down tremendously,” Kadourra said of the wine selection in the store.
In 2014, the Tennessee Legislature approved selling wine in grocery stores, then 78 counties and municipalities across the state, including Chattanooga, East Ridge and Red Bank, voted to allow grocery stores to begin selling wine as of July 2016.