MLL quietly tweaks no-minors policy inside Liquor Marts

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This article was published 03/10/2022 (814 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Three years after installing controlled entrances to improve safety for customers and staff, Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries is once again allowing shoppers to take their young children inside retail outlets.

The restricted-entry systems were introduced in 2019 in response to a spike in thefts and organized robberies at Liquor Marts across the city, many of which were being committed by groups of youths.

That influenced the Crown corporation’s decision to bar entry to anyone under the age of 18, MLL president and CEO Manny Atwal said.

“Now that we’ve managed to restore the safety and confidence that our customers and employees are used to having, and deserve, we are fine-tuning our approach to ensure we are impacting customer convenience as little as possible,” Atwal said.

As of Sept. 20, adults — who continue to require photo ID to enter — are permitted to take children up to age 11 inside the stores; the children do not require identification.

Children over the age of 11 are not allowed inside, a decision Atwal said came after consultations with employees and a prior pilot project that was successful.

“Some customers with children find it difficult to find child care and cannot easily shop with us under the no-minors policy,” he said. “We are now at a place where our controlled entrance procedures are well-enough established and refined that we are confident in allowing minors 11 and under back into our stores.”

Winnipeg father of two Zach Fleisher took his frustration with not being able to take his two-year-old son with him when running weekend errands — including a stop at a Liquor Mart — to social media Saturday.

He was then informed by a friend who works at an outlet that the policy had just changed, a surprise to him and many others online.

“I looked online and they had changed the policy, but they didn’t let anyone know,” he said. “And based on what I’ve heard from tons of other parents and folks is that no one else knew about this.”

Fleisher said he was pleasantly surprised by the change, not just because of the returned convenience, but because it was a way for parents to frame the safe consumption of alcohol in an unstigmatized way to their kids.

“On one hand, yeah, I love taking my kid grocery shopping, it’s a great way to get them out of the house… But it’s also, I think, really important to have those conversations about safe consumption of a substance that is legal, and is one that a lot of people use, and that you know that your kid will be exposed to one day,” he said.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca