Why we don't have decent grocery stores

During the time we have lived in OKC, we have been plagued with there not being any decent full-service grocery stores in this city. It's really not our problem much longer, since we're moving back to St. Louis soon, but we finally understand why this problem exists here. Jeff saw a story on the local news the other day about the topic of grocery stores, and evidently the deal is that there have, in fact, been proper grocery stores that have wanted to come into this city and state but decided not to because of Oklahoma's ridiculous laws on the sale of alcoholic beverages. Here, only stand-alone liquor stores may sell wine, hard liquor and beer with an alcohol level above 3.2 percent--and they can't sell anything else, not even mixers or ice, and they are not allowed to chill beer in refrigerators. Grocery stores and convenience stores can sell the fabled 3.2 beer and "wine cooler" or "malt beverage" products that have a low alcohol content like that, but no real wine or spirits or most beers (since most have higher alcohol).

Let me back up a little bit, because I never defined what I mean by a "decent" grocery store. I mean one where the "periphery" of it where the real food (fresh produce, meat, dairy, etc.) is decently stocked with a variety of stuff and maybe even includes full-service deli and meat/fish counters. And where one can buy wine and normal non-pussy beer. Here, the closest thing to that is a chain called Buy-4-Less. They do not have service meat/seafood departments, but some locations have a (poorly stocked) deli. The location nearest our home is also quite respectable as far as having Hispanic-cuisine foodstuffs and fresh herbs and veggies that one might associate with Vietnamese food (which is because a lot of Hispanic and Vietnamese customers live near here; further-flung locations such as the one nearer the location of my day-job do not have these things). Another grocery chain with a number of nearby locations is called Homeland, and that one is pretty much lowest-end but has the advantage of being not busy ever, so if you just need to pick up a few very standard basics, it's a good bet if you are too crabby to wait in a check-out line. But the single biggest grocery chain here, which towers over all others, is none other than motherfucking WALMART. Where we came from, Walmart did not even have a location in the city-proper, and the suburban ones were the discount department stores without much emphasis on groceries. But here they have the "Super" Walmarts which incorporate groceries along with the clothes and other crap, and also free-standing "Neighborhood Markets" which are what passes for a grocery store here, without the clothing and electronics and gun departments. 

Anyway, I had wondered all along why none of the kind of big grocers that I was used to from living in other states were not here as well. I wondered also why the high-end chains like Whole Foods and Trader Joe's did not locate here. I'd assumed that it was just because Walmart had somehow smothered all other commerce. But no: It's because those other stores all run wine departments, which are illegal here, and they decided to not bother with Oklahoma and its dumb-ass fundie Christian puritanism (which somehow has still resulted in this state being one of the worst in the country as far as health/crime outcomes from substance abuse). We do, however, have some fabulous ethnic groceries (like the stunning Super Cao) which do make it possible to get a wide variety of fresh food. But when we move back home, we will have the best of both worlds: full-service grocery stores (with wine and beer and deli and seafood) AND awesome ethnic shops. What was once normal to us will suddenly seem super luxurious.