The state is making it more and more difficult to do business here.

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. Well, there’s a big controversy in New York. Eighty percent of New Yorkers want wine in supermarkets and it’s been blocked for so many years with us this morning is pulled Zuber from the New York State Business Constile and Paul, it’s been blocked for forty years, fifty years, and eighty percent of the consumers wanted So what do

0:31 we do? Well?

0:33 Speaker 2 You know, John, I think this is a perfect example of why people are frustrated with government, right Like I think when you look at the last election, what can come out of the last election as the fact that people were angry at government because government wasn’t doing for them.

0:50 And now we have a proposal that eighty percent of New Yorkers want. I’ve never seen anything on the legislative vent where you have eighty percent of the public wanting something. And it’s ridiculous to think that we wouldn’t start moving down the pathway to do this. If you look way back in two thousand and eight, the CNPOL had it

1:15 at like fifty six percent, fifty seven percent. Now it’s up to eighty percent of New Yorkers want this. And what I don’t understand is with all this talk about you know, me reaching the working class and reaching voters, this is what voters want. They want wine and grocery stores.

1:35 And here’s another thing that everybody has to remember. What does competition do. Competition lower prices. So if you have more retailers out in the market, it is going to lower prices. The way the whole alcohol betver system works in New York, it will guarantee that prices for wine will be lower, so you have an affordability angle. And

1:58 then the third point I want to to you is the fact that there’s revenue associated with this. There’s more tax revenue, there’s going to be more probably license fee revenue. And we’re looking at a state where the out years and our budget is deficit after deficit, African deficit. And quite frankly, you know the president is cutting back, right,

2:20 so New York is going There’s going to be some things that we’ve been used to that are going to get caught from the federal level. So we need revenue. And this is something that eighty percent of the New Yorkers want. I just don’t understand. And forty states have this, how can we not have this in New York? It’s crazy.

2:39 I understand it. One hundred and ten percent, and that’s revenues that will create for New York State that consumers.

2:47 Speaker 1 Efficit complain about. And the other big item, I understand that nobody’s selling New York State wine and they can put a condition on it that the supermarkets have to contain X amount of New York State wine and and and have our business in New York State flourish and with no with no complaints. Who’s going to complaint?

3:13 Speaker 2 Absolutely one of the one of the problems. And I think everybody can understand this from a very basic level. If you don’t have access to a retailer, you can’t sell your product, right. So the problem that we have is we have all these wonderful New York wines that you know, competition after competition, they’ve won gold medals, and

3:34 you know, people will say, some of these wines are really really good wines. But when you go down and you go through the marketplace, they’re not on the shelves of your average liquor store. You know, I think someone said to me recently, you have to you have to go with a magnifying class to find them. In some

3:51 of the liquor stores. And then so these these wineries that are New York wineries that create economic development, create jobs, they don’t have shelf space. And if they don’t have shelf space, then the only way they’re going to be able to sell their wine is if you visit their winery or the finger Legs or you go to maybe

4:09 a restaurant and the finger Legs were close to home. You know, this gives them the opportunity not only not only to expand their retail market, right, but think about what happens if some of these wines are in a Wegmans or in a in a in another grocery. Change the chances that they get picked up by a Wegmans.

4:29 And Wegmans says, hey, you know what this is selling great, Let’s put it in our Virginia store. Hey this is going great, Let’s put in our store in another state. So so the ability to grow New York winds is exponential based on this, and it’s an opportunity for our New York wines to get out there. And like you said,

4:48 in one of the bills, we create a tax incentive for you know, the grocery stores to sell New York New York wines, and it’s something that will help New York giants flourish in the state and create revenue and create jobs.

5:06 Speaker 1 Understood. Now, the other big item that your doctors tell you is that the European lines is so much better, but becolers, they don’t create, they don’t contain self fits and things like that. Medafhal wise like, can we make New York State lines even better? Yeah?

5:28 Speaker 2 Well, you know, if we have more economic opportunities for the New York State wineries, they’re just going to grow, They’re going to get better. They can invest more in their wineries. You know. One of the problems that a lot of New York wineries say to me happens is they go because in New York you have to have

5:43 what’s called a liquor wholesaler in order to deliver the product. And they go to the liquor wholesalers and they say, hey, I want you to deliver my product. And a lot of the liquor wholesalers go, well, you don’t make enough product for me to put it on my trucks to sell it to my retail clients. And so it becomes

5:59 like I catch twenty two, like they’re not going to produce more if they don’t have the outlets, so they’re kind of stuck, right, And the more outlets they have and the more ability they can grow to your point, the wine just gets better. They can they can adjust things, they can they can do different things with the wines.

6:18 Then they could try different types of agricultural you know, technology that’s out there, and let’s not forget to you know in our Finger Legs region where there’s a strong wine industry, as well as Long Island, but in the Finger Legs region, we have one of the top universities in the world of Cornell University, whose agriculture school is

6:39 constantly turning out new technology that’s helpful to these wounderies. So we have an opportunity here and eighty percent of New Yorkers want it. This is what New Yorkers want, and it’s high time that our government starts listening to what the people want. Right, instead of telling the people what they should they need, we should be doing what

7:01 they want rather than telling them what they need. And it’s high time we do is. Let’s take the politics out of it. You and I both know that many years ago there were political figures in New York State who happen to have interests in liquor stores, who use their influence to stop it, right, and those figures are

7:20 gone now, right, So let’s move forward. Let’s move forward with us.

7:26 Speaker 1 Pull super you’re absolutely right there, and let’s move forward and let’s do what’s right for New York State, New York City. And people will love it without complaining about it.

7:41 Speaker 2 Absolutely. It’s one of the few things that our government can do that eighty percent of the people. So they got something everybody loves, so they should move forward with it.

7:50 Speaker 1 Okay, thank you so much, and we’ll catch up again real soon. Thank you.