West Michigan Liquor Distributor Fined $3 Million On 88 Violations
The topic of liquor has certainly been popular over the past few months. How much more will we drink out of fear? How much more will we drink out of bordem? How much more will we drink and use fear and bordem as an excuse?
Lately we've been discussing how bars and restaurants can extend their footprint outdoors to make it easier to serve the public. The downtown Kalamazoo Outdoor Experience for instance would allow these businesses to extend to the sidewalks and even parking spaces to create safer spaces.
Then there's the "drinks to go" idea that would essentially serve drinks like a drive-through. I've been a proponent of both of these ideas for years.
But before we arrived at this place caused by the pandemic, we heard talk of a possible liquor shortage back in November. When we didn't have a care in the world we were worried we wouldn't have enough booze for the holidays.
While most of the shortages affected the East side of the state there were some issues here in West Michigan. For these reasons, the Michigan Liquor Control Commission launched an investigation into a software problem with Republic National Distributing Company.
The result of the investigation by the Michigan Attorney General's office concluded that RNDC was in fact responsible for a major shortage to liquor stores, bars and restaurants which cost them all a considerable amount of revenue. The penalty has now cost RNDC a considerable amount. The 88 violations resulted in a $3 million fine which RNDC paid without an appeal.