Although state lawmakers are considering a ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages at self-checkout stands, Long Beach may beat them to it – and area grocery chains such as Fresh & Easy that depend on the proliferating technology consider that a blow to business.

Long Beach Councilman Patrick O’Donnell last week proposed that the council look into a ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages at self-checkout stands, and the council agreed to have a committee review the matter.

Grocery industry officials said Long Beach would be the first city in the state they know of to consider the measure. And it could be a precursor to any statewide fight over the issue.

It would mostly affect El Segundo-based Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, which has two locations in Long Beach. It only has self-checkout stands, not traditional checkout clerks who attend to one customer at a time. Also, the Market by Vons, a small, heavily self-checkout-dependent grocery, is similar.

“We have safeguards in place to make sure the alcohol purchase is flagged by an attendant or clerk when sold,” said Brendan Wonnacott, a Fresh & Easy spokesman. “We are continuing to educate policymakers about the considerable efforts we have made, both in training and in our systems, to ensure alcohol is only sold to those who can legally purchase it.”

California already forbids cigarettes, spray paint and some over-the-counter medications to be sold in self-service checkouts to make it tougher for minors to obtain them.

Assemblyman Hector De La Torre (D-South Gate) earlier this year proposed a bill, AB 1060, that would add alcoholic beverages to that list. The bill is on the Senate floor and expected to be picked up again after the holiday recess.

The California Grocers Association, which represents grocery chains with self-checkout stands such as Ralphs, Vons and Fresh & Easy, all of which operate in Long Beach, opposes both the state bill and the Long Beach proposal.

Ralphs did not return calls for comment and Vons referred the Business Journal to the grocers association.

“The self-checkout stands freeze up when someone swipes alcohol, requiring an attendant by law to check for identification to ensure the person is not a minor or intoxicated,” said Dave Heylen, a spokesman for the grocers group.

Opponents have expressed concern over how the ban could be used by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union to block the growth of the Fresh & Easy chain, which does not employ union workers.

“I don’t think this is about stopping the sale of alcohol when you have in place a system that seems to work and saves consumers money because of lower labor costs,” said Randy Gordon, president of the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, which is against O’Donnell’s proposal. “It seems odd that the only grocers mostly affected would be nonunion, so perhaps this is about finding a way to preserve those jobs.”

Both De La Torre and O’Donnell denied their push for the bill has anything to do with unions.

“Were labor unions behind all the other products we forbid selling at self-checkout stands?” De La Torre said. “This is addressing a big discrepancy that needs to be fixed.”

O’Donnell, a high school teacher, said he has heard from some of his students about how minors trick the self-checkout stands by scanning a nonalcoholic beverage twice in place of one with alcohol.

“This isn’t about business or unions, this is about public safety and protecting it,” O’Donnell said.

Checking alcohol

Self-service checkout systems are growing in popularity.

The IHL Group, a Franklin, Tenn., retail technology consulting firm, has reported that transactions at self-service checkout lanes and kiosks will surpass $775 billion this year. By 2013, that’ll more than double to $1.6 trillion as the lanes proliferate.

Under the system, shoppers run their items across a scanner and place them on an electronic scale. The machine tallies the weight of the product to see if it matches what was scanned, and issues an error message if it doesn’t. Shoppers have had a mixed reaction to the lanes – which are convenient to buy a few items but are less so as carts get filled up – but they cut labor costs for supermarkets.

Last year, De La Torre first proposed a bill banning the sale of alcohol at self-checkouts but it died in committee. This year, however, the second version breezed through the Assembly, but was pulled by the lawmaker in September after he said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger expressed interest in it.

“The governor wanted more information about how people can bypass the checkout systems, but I couldn’t get it together before the recess,” he said.

Another problem is an opinion from Long Beach City Attorney Bob Shannon that alcohol sales can only be regulated by the state.

However, the state agency in charge of regulating alcohol in the state isn’t getting behind the self-checkout booze ban. The California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control has said it is not supporting the bill and doesn’t think that self-check counters contribute to the problem of minors getting alcohol, according to agency spokesman John Carr.

“Most get an adult to buy it for them,” Carr said.

But proponents, such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said the machines can be easily duped and point to Web sites explaining how minors can do so.

According to an April test of Southern California food stores by UCLA’s Community Economic Development Clinic and the union-affiliated Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, the machines failed to detect alcohol purchases or were ignored by supermarket staff almost 20 percent of the time.

And Tesco, the giant retailer that owns Fresh & Easy, has had problems with self-service checkout systems in its native Britain, paying about $10,000 in fines to government regulators for alcohol sales to minors this year.

The chamber’s Gordon said passing the proposal, especially in Long Beach where council members have worked the last few years in getting more grocery chains in neighborhoods, would hurt future related efforts. Some chains would be forced to either give up lucrative alcohol sales, or change their store set-up by making an employee handle alcohol sales.

“This proposal is overkill and it also unfairly mandates a regulation on such a small number of businesses in our city,” he said. “If this proposal passes, it will send a message to current and future grocers that Long Beach is less interested in working with business and more interested in placing unfair mandates upon them.”

De La Torre said that opponents are using scare tactics and stressed that his goal is not to ban alcohol from sale at stores with self-checkout lanes altogether, but just to make sure that a human oversees the sale.

O’Donnell said he will drop the pursuit of the city ban if the state bill is signed into law before Long Beach can approve the rule.

THE SITUATION:

Long Beach may ban the sale of alcohol at self-checkout registers.

THE OBJECTION:

Groceries that rely on self-checkouts say it would raise costs.

THE WHISPERS:

Some believe the ban is an attack on non-union stores.

WHAT’S NEXT:

Long Beach will study the proposal; the state may consider a similar ban.