Alcohol sales trending up for area liquor stores during coronavirus pandemic

With a number of bars closed and limited bar seating at restaurants, some people looking for a drink are having to look elsewhere.

Some of those people are what's driving up the sales for liquor stores

During the covid 19 pandemic, 3 different parts of our lives have closed down to due to safe y concerns and that changed some habits for peop caleb saylor explains how the pandemic has been impacting alcohol sales.

One of t stop that didn during the pandemic was drinking alcohol, the only change is how we access it.

Bars have been closed for months and restaurants who serve alcohol have only recently reopened, some are still missing out on huge chunks of their profit because they are selling enough booze.

Andy lebamoff, co-owner of cap ?cork in fort wayne says his business has trended upwards during the pandemic, which is good for his employees, but not great for the market obody knew who was going to stay open.

Nobody knew who was going to close, etcetera, etcetera.

So, there was some panic buying and that was an extremely busy week.

After that when things settled down, obviously with the bars and restaurants closing, that business had to go somewhere.

Well, a lot of it went to the grocery stores and some of it went to the independent package stores.

Increasi g alcohol sales isn just local, in a nationwide survey, wallethub found that alcohol was the 2nd most popular nonessential purchase during the pandemic, only behind entertainment.

The trend may be due to stress caused by the pandemic.

Richard ruhrold with the bowen center says during stressful times, people may ignore their feelings and turn to substances instead.

Nstead of t ok, g ourselves it maybe seeking out a bit of support, we turn to other things that just make the situation worse.

We want to get rid of these feelings, so we isolate ourselves or we turn to alcohol or drugs, and now we e compounded the problem.

Doesn know if people are actually drinking more or not, but he hopes that things return back to normal despite his incrhe e in business pie is a little bit bigger right now, so we picked up some extra business, which is good, but again, i would rather have it going back pre- pandemic where restaurants, bars were open and everybody was sharing in business and everybody was happy.

Wayne, caleb saylor, fox 55 news if you or someone you if you or if you or someone you know may be coping with stress in harmful ways, you're encouraged to