A worker walks down an aisle at Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits LLC distribution center in Louisville, Kentucky, in September 2018. A looming lawsuit against Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits would be aimed at lowering costs for consumers. Federal regulators are planning to use a rarely enforced law from the Great Depression to allege America’s largest alcohol distributor is unfairly pricing wine and spirits, a person familiar with the matter told CNN.
The latest battleground in the antitrust fight could be booze. Southern Glazer’s, based in Miami and operating in 44 US states, is the largest wine and spirits distributor in the United States. The family-owned company distributes everything from Grey Goose vodka and Jim Beam bourbon to Yellow Tail wine.In other words, discounts to big-box chains must be available to mom-and-pop stores, too.
The thinking is that if a major alcohol distributor is offering deeper discounts to, say, Walmart or Target, that’s unfair to the smaller stores and their shoppers. And if those stores don’t exist, consumers are harmed from the lack of access and from the fact that the larger chains now face less competition on price.The delightful craft bar and kitchen Roses on Adeline opens in Berkeley
While opponents of enforcing Robinson-Patman say consumers are helped by the big discounts large chains get, Hepner argued the opposite is true. “For decades, antitrust enforcers have overlooked this statute, allowing dominant firms to use their size and market power to crush main street businesses and increase consumer costs,” said Jones, leader of the Main Street Competition Coalition, an industry group that supports enforcement of the 1936 law. “Enforcing the Robinson-Patman Act will help restore true price competition across the economy, benefiting consumers with more choices and lower prices for everyday essentials.
Schwartz, the Reed Smith lawyer, said a case against Southern Glazer’s would reflect a shift in enforcement policy at the FTC under Khan away from the consumer welfare standards, where lower prices are almost always considered better for competition.