The Willy Sutton School of Retailing

You can run a car on alcohol, but gasoline shots don’t go down as well

From FWIW’s New Mexico correspondent: Forced by a new law to choose between selling gasoline or booze, the gas stations are following the money

A one-paragraph amendment to the state Legislature’s new, sweeping alcohol reform law gave owners of gas stations in McKinley County a choice: You can sell hard liquor or you can sell gas.

To Benjamin Gonzales, manager of the El Sabino’s grocery and gas station in Vanderwagen, it was a “no-brainer.”

“We stopped selling gas July 1, the day the new liquor law went into effect.”

The store is one of at least three in the county that covered its gas pumps in plastic in recent months, a direct response to the law, according to store employees, residents and county officials. The law prohibited gas stations from selling liquor in the county, so the stations stopped selling gas to circumvent the ban.

The choice to stop selling gas in rural parts of the county has stranded some motorists and added another inconvenience to life near the border of the Navajo Nation, residents said.

…

“Everyone’s complaining that we should have kept the gas and got rid of the liquor, and this, that and the third, but people just don’t understand,” Gonzales said in a phone interview. “I mean, if we would have done that, several of our employees would have lost their job, you know, or had their hours cut.”

Now that El Sabino has stopped selling gas, the closest places to fuel up along Route 602 are in Zuni Pueblo, about 17 miles southwest, and Gallup, about 21 miles north.

Just last week, Gonzales said, a car sputtered to a stop at the station, out of gas. He said he happened to have a five-gallon tank in the back of the shop to help the stranded driver make it to Gallup.