People looking to buy a bottle of wine or spirits in Old Town Park City will have to make a drive rather than walk to the Swede Alley Liquor Store.
The Swede Alley Liquor Store will be closed for at least a few weeks. This comes after staffing shortages in all State Liquor Stores.
Tiffany Clason is the new director of the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. She said it's not only that stores are understaffed, but also they have to manage the challenges that come with the pandemic.
"The DABC and our staffing have been impacted," Clason said. "Just like so many other industries and businesses, especially in the retail industry, when you have these exposures. We want to make sure that we're keeping public safety first and foremost."
The department has protocols in place for both direct and indirect COVID-19 exposures, which can shut stores down for a day to as long as a week.
Indirect exposures mean that stores don’t have to shut down - instead one or more employees can quarantine, creating a staffing storage. Clason said in some cases they can transfer employees from other stores temporarily.
"I know down in the Valley — where we have sort of a larger volume of stores — there are instances where we're able to take management and kind of move them around to other stores — along with their part time employees or other full time employees at a location," she said.
Not only do Park City liquor stores not have enough employees, those they do have are subject to quarantine. The assistant manager at the Swede Alley Liquor Store said after losing a part-time and a full-time employee, their location only has three staff members.
Those three will transfer to other Park City locations. Clason said this will help customer service at the Kimball Junction and Snowcreek Drive stores.
"And so what was important is that those two stores remain operational," she said. "They're larger. They have a really good selection. It's easier to social distance in those stores because they're larger. And so what we wanted to make sure that we did while we were having these staffing strains, is be able to move the employees into places where we need to make sure we're continuing to have very robust operations so that they can have the best customer service experience possible."
Why is it so hard to staff State Liquor Stores?
One possibility is the pay. Both part-time and full-time store clerks can make from around $10-14 per hour.
Clason said the DABC isn’t the only state-run department that’s struggling with compensation.
"This is not a challenge that's unique to the DABC," she said. "It's not a challenge that’s unique to state agencies. It's not even, unfortunately, a challenge that's unique to us like in the broader picture of the economy here."
She hopes the department will be able to make salary adjustments, which she said could happen under Governor Spencer Cox’s proposed budget.
While the DABC has considered staffing agencies, Clason said this isn’t the best option.
"When you have even part-time employees, but that are not temporary, they are able to provide the best service because they have greater ownership of the work that they're doing," she said. "They have maybe better training, better understanding, product knowledge to be able to help customers."
The Swede Alley Liquor Store will officially be closed Tuesday, Jan. 19. However, the last day it will be open is this Saturday due to the holiday Monday.