Pa. liquor board will expand curbside pickup to nearly all stores on Monday
PLCB press secretary Shawn Kelly said the decision came “after working through the challenges of introducing and refining completely new store processes.”
The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board plans to expand its curbside pickup program to nearly all its stores Monday.
On that day, the LCB will open a total of 565 of its roughly 600 stores statewide, including 176 stores already reopened a week ago. But customers can only place orders by phone — which has led to a lot of busy signals.
“We acknowledge that Pennsylvanians are frustrated," LCB Chairman Tim Holden said. "After learning from our experiences this past week, we’ve made improvements to process orders faster, expand the hours we take orders by phone, and be more flexible in scheduling pickups, even the same day if pickup appointments are available.”
Most reopened stores will take from 50 to 100 orders per day on a first-call, first-served basis beginning at 9 a.m. Monday through Saturday. Employees will work to schedule pickup appointments with customers between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. on those days. Some stores, however, will operate with more limited days and hours.
Inventory varies by store, so the employee who takes your call will tell you what’s available. There is a six-bottle limit per order, and a limit of one order per customer per day.
Have a credit card ready for payment over the phone. No orders will be accepted by email or voice mail.
» READ MORE: Pa. liquor stores open for curbside pickup. Here’s how to place an order at a location near you.
The LCB closed all of its locations in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, leading to customers to stock up in record numbers before the stores shut their doors. It reopened online sales for home delivery earlier this month, but due to overwhelming demand, site access was set up to randomly limit the number of customers placing orders at once.
The LCB said site access will continue to be randomized after reopening stores, although daily orders have increased exponentially.
In the first four days of the LCB’s curbside pickup program, it fulfilled 38,145 orders totaling $3.64 million in sales. Its online sales from April 1 through 23 amounted to $7.11 million — $2 million more than the total e-commerce sales for the entire 2018-19 fiscal year.