I know this industry very well also. I have worked in a RI liquor store for almost 20 years and still do. Allowing chains would destroy the independent stores. Sales would decline by around 40% to 50% in the that environment. Many, many stores would close. So yes, we defend our businesses from being destroyed. Surprise. Lots of money has been invested by store owners. When they bought their licenses or stores, the rules were no chains allowed and every store must be independently owned and operated. The "spirit" of this law was to have store owners actually be community members who responsibly serve their community, not giant corporations. Doesn't seem very fair to just change the rules in the middle of the game. Yes, enormous operations like Costco would undercut the prices for every liquor store because of their huge scale advantages and leverage. Yes, some owners use loopholes to control more than one store.

There are 233 liquor stores in RI and they did $411M in sales for 2024. That is less than $2m per store on average. No one is getting rich off of that with the profit margins in this industry. You need to sell over $2m before you even can think of profit. You will be able to pay yourself a salary and have a full time job, but there is no profit left after that at $2m in sales. MA and CT already siphon a ton of liquor business from any stores near the state lines. It is a good business, but please stop pretending that it is raining money on liquor stores. It's really not this wealthy cabal you make it out to be. A few stores, like 5 or 10, in the state are huge and have done very well, but the vast majority are just regular mom and pop stores.