 | | A novelty bar item sold online |
When is a gas station a grocery store? When it wants to sell alcohol.
Under Indiana law, some retail outlets like gas stations can land a permit to sell alcohol if they sell a certain amount of food products.
With this door open in statute, Speedway (or Speedway SuperAmerica as the brand goes by online) may be next to push for alcohol sales throughout the state. Currently, 108 of its 225 locations sell alcohol, according to testimony at Monday's hearing before a local review board.
"(Speedways) are groceries under the law," insisted attorney Matthew Morgan, who represented the Enon, Ohio-based corporation at Monday's hearing.
At Monday's hearing, food "products" were identified by Speedway officials as milk, cheese, bread, fruit, canned goods, cereal, pet and cleaning products - hardly the mainstay products of a fully stocked neighborhood grocery.
If this scenario is starting to sound a lot like Walgreens (which landed nearly 200 new permits in an unprecedented number of applications filed in the state), it should.
The law firm is different this time around, Barnes & Thornburg for Speedway as opposed to Bose, McKinney & Evans for Walgreens, but much of the argument is the same.
Most of the new retailers, like drug stores and gas stations, coming in with requests for new permits for alcohol sales are claiming they have to do so to stay competitive and provide consumers what they want, and what they demand.
This time, however, Speedway has come to the table without petitions of support from either customers or neighbors (as Walgreens did). Instead, they say "anecdotally" they've heard that their customers want alcohol in their gas stations. They claim at such busy locations as 82nd Street and Allisonville Road that they must be able to compete with area grocery stores that already sell alcohol.
At Monday's hearing, two different permit requests for two Speedway locations also had very different outcomes. The location at 4960 E. 56th St. was unanimously denied by a vote of three. The location at 8202 Allisonville Road resulted in a 2-1 approval.
What was the difference in hearing the back-to-back permits when many of the complaints were the same? Not much.
Project RAD provided crime reports to Millersville at Fall Creek Valley, Inc. for the permit that was denied. Serious crime was one of the considerations reviewed, but overall community desire (along with a well organized group of remonstrators) made a convincing argument for the board to deny a new alcohol permit in a neighborhood that doesn't want more.
Members from Brendonridge, Brendonwood, Devington, Fall Creek Manor Block Club, Kessler Commons, Kessler View and Windridge, along with City-County Councilwoman Christine Scales and Senator Jean Breaux, presented a united remonstrance. | 
