By Jake Gourwitz SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — From lumber to microchips to now, liquor, the pandemic has created shortages across industries. Liquor stores have been impacted immensely and those in Central New York are no exception.
Westcott Liquors located at 111 Harvard Pl. in Syracuse is no stranger to the supply chain chaos that has become the new norm for liquor stores all over America. Luckily, for both owner Prakash Patel and his customers, many shelves remain fully stocked, but he said you may not find the bottle size you’re looking for.
“So we don’t have a 375 milliliter right now,” Patel said. “We don’t have a 200 milliliter right now.”
He was referring to bottles, or lack thereof, of D’Usse Cognac. If customers want the liquor they have to buy the 750 liter bottle.
“There are three sizes regularly, but we are missing two sizes,” Patel said.
Rolling with the 750 liter bottle might be the way to go with Thanksgiving exactly three weeks away. According to a study by Womply, Thanksgiving Eve is the third biggest day of the year for liquor stores with revenue skyrocketing 180 percent.
Patel and Westcott Liquors aren’t the only ones in Central New York feeling the liquor shortage. Take a trip to Liverpool, New York and you’ll find Russ Macy at Apple Spirits who has been able to keep his shelves filled, but it hasn’t been easy.
“Supply distributors were allocating items so that you could only buy so many, where as in previous years we had been able to buy things like Eagle Rare,” Macy said. “Now I can’t buy it at all.”
Perhaps the biggest challenge for Macy, has been the unpredictability.
“It may be a single item from a Jack Daniels product, but not their whole line,” Macy said. “It may just be one size, it may be four or five different sizes…”
With each day, week, and month a new challenge, Patel and Macy are unsure when the shortages will come to an end. However, they are both confident their shelves can continue to serve customers their favorites and get everyone ready for the holidays.
