Web Extra!
The River Forest village board approved on Monday night a request by Walgreens to sell packaged beer and wine at its 7251 Lake St. location.
To accommodate this request for Walgreens, which in River Forest has just less than the originally required square footage, the board created a new Class 4C liquor license category.
With this license, Walgreens will be allowed – just as Whole Foods Market and Jewel are – to sell beer and wine between the hours of 9 a.m. and 10 p.m. and allocate no more than 10 percent of its total retail space to such stock. But unlike the two grocers, the drugstore will not be allowed to conduct wine and beer samplings.
This fee for the license is $4,000 annually.
The drugstore’s management and its attorney formally presented the request for a liquor license to the village board in December. At the time, they said the request was part of a company decision to eventually sell beer and wine at all Walgreens locations. They said alcohol sales were not expected to account for more than 5 percent of the store’s gross revenues.
-Bill Dwyer