Woodburns in Food Lion postponed

In a decision reserved only for complex cases, the Calvert County Board of License Commissioners, or Liquor Board, deferred a ruling Thursday night on whether to allow the wine and beer license holders of Woodburns Beverages to transfer the license from the closed Woodburns of Solomons to the Lusby Food Lion supermarket chain store.
“It’s been our policy to make a decision immediately following a hearing,” Chairman J. Allen Swann said after hearing almost three hours worth of support and opposition for the transfer. “I think there’s a very good chance of appeal no matter which way it goes. We want to make the best, the properest decision.”
At the start of the hearing, Swann addressed the full house, admitting a decision would not be easy because Maryland’s liquor laws are not always clear-cut. “A lot of things are left up to the discretion of the board. If it was black and white on paper we wouldn’t be here,” he said, adding that Thursday’s hearing was one of the largest crowds he has seen.
After more than 50 years in business, Woodburns closed April 16. Now, Thomas F. McKay, president of Woodburns Food and secretary and treasurer of Woodburns Beverages, plans to open again in the Food Lion in the shopping center off H.G. Trueman Road. The specialty meats and cheeses for which the store is known will be sold along with the other produce in the Food Lion grocery store, and Woodburns Beverages will consist of a cornered-off section of the store where wine and beer will be shelved.
Customers would purchase the alcohol at the Food Lion registers, but McKay, who has owned Woodburns for 20 years, said all of the profits would go to Woodburns, and Lusby Food Lion store manager Mike Wetherald assured the board no one younger than 19 would be able to sell alcohol at the registers. Also, all employees would be required to undergo training and pass a test related to the sale of alcohol and tobacco before the register would allow them access. Self-checkout aisles would not allow alcohol to be scanned without an attendant’s approval. Liquor sale certification training is scheduled for all employees this week, he said.
Wetherald said he never has had any liquor sale violations, and he used to work for Woodburns. Food Lion Director Rick Winningham, who has been in charge of supervising the sale of beer and wine at grocery stores in Virginia and also never has had any violations, said the Woodburns section of the Lusby store would be up and running within a matter of days once the license transfer is approved.Board member Alonzo Barber said he was concerned that while loopholes in the law may allow for this scenario to take place, there are state regulations that prohibit the sale of alcohol in chain stores to protect the smaller liquor businesses around them. Putting wine and beer in a chain store where customers can buy it with their groceries, he said, “that’s like the gold mine.”
Winningham said he believes this specific situation, transfering a small business that sells alcohol and placing it inside a chain supermarket, is a first in Maryland, although Food Lions in Easton, Salisbury and Mitchellville have been granted liquor licenses. This would be a first for Calvert.
McKay’s attorney, Mark Davis, said there would be no change in ownership under the transfer and the stockholders would remain the same, with McKay owning 45 percent of the company, his sister, Elizabeth Johnson, who will continue to supervise the store when it relocates to Food Lion, owning another 45 percent, and Susan Jones of Lusby at 10 percent.
McKay said he believes the transfer is necessary because it is the only alternative for Woodburns to stay in business and, when he took over the company, he promised its former owners, Edgar and Isabel Woodburns, that he would not let the business die.
“I committed to him at the time that we would do everything we could to try and keep Woodburns alive,” he said, showing the board two memorial plaques for Edgar and Isabel that hung outside of the Solomons store and will continue to hang outside of the new location.
However, Leda McKay of Lusby, the Woodburns’ daughter, was among the transfer’s protestors at the hearing.
“I feel very strongly about this issue,” she said, adding that her parents believed in shopping local and that the small businessman was the “backbone” of the community. “This proposal seems to be an underhanded and shady way to do business, and it will open the door for other chain stores to have a liquor license.”
Also among the protestors were Mike and Carolyn Hart of Patuxent Wine & Spirits, who organized a group of opposition to the transfer. With them that night were the owners of Lusby Liquors and Ranch Liquor. Hart has argued that small business owners will suffer from the competition of the chain supermarket in their neighborhood. Carolyn McHugh, president and CEO of the Calvert County Chamber of Commerce, defended the stores, siding against the transfer in a letter to the board and during the hearing.