Sheetz buying up liquor licenses in Butler County since 2016
Sheetz has been buying up the limited number of liquor licenses in Butler County, and a long-running local restaurant may be the next to transfer its license to the convenience store company.
Michael Pawk, the owner of the Lyndora Hotel, said he doesn’t “have anything to say” about the potential sale and transfer of the restaurant’s liquor license to the Sheetz in Harrisville. The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board is evaluating a transfer of the Lyndora Hotel’s liquor license, which expires Friday, June 30, to the Sheetz in Harrisville.
Nick Ruffner, public relations manager for Sheetz, said the Harrisville location has applied for a liquor license to add a beer cave in the store.
Shawn Kelly, press secretary of the liquor control board, said Sheetz has paid upward of $300,000 for a Butler County liquor license in past auctions — one of the only ways for a business to obtain a license, aside from transfer of an existing license.
“If there are no other licensees in a municipality, and Harrisville is not over its quota, a license can be transferred by sending an application to liquor control board,” Kelly said. “The fact that it came up in our system and that both businesses are there, that tells me that we have received a transfer application.”
Liquor licenses are supposed to be limited by a municipality’s population — one liquor license per every 3,000 residents, and many counties and municipalities in Pennsylvania are well above their liquor license quota — by population, only 65 businesses in Butler County should posses retail liquor licenses, Kelly said.
The amount of time it takes for an application to be processed varies. Once the board receives an application, it “conducts a thorough investigation, including looking at business practices and corporate structure before rendering a decision as to the transfer of a license,” according to Kelly.
Kelly said the board doesn’t track how much a liquor license sells for when transferred from business to business, but Sheetz paid about $612,000 for two licenses in restaurant license auctions in fall 2016. Pennsylvania legislature created restaurant licensee auctions in 2016, which allows the board to auction licenses that have expired or have not been renewed dating back to 2000.
Those two licenses, which went to a Sheetz in Butler and one in Buffalo Township, are the only ones to ever be auctioned in Butler County, according to Kelly.
It is unlikely the board will create new liquor licenses, because many Pennsylvania counties are already over their quota, with many existing licenses being “grandfathered in.”
The only other way an establishment could obtain a new liquor license is if the municipal government passes a resolution or ordinance allowing for an applicant to obtain a new license. Kelly added that there are currently no active liquor licenses in Harrisville.
“The quota gives municipalities some say in how many liquor licenses there are,” Kelly said.
According to Ruffner, the Sheetz will “offer a variety of domestic, import and craft beers, as well as wine.”
“Sheetz is committed to responsibly complying with all current laws and regulations, including the enforcement of a 100 percent proof-of-age policy,” Ruffner said.
Pennsylvania has allowed one liquor license per every 3,000 people since 1990, according to Kelly.
Liquor laws in Pennsylvania differ from laws in nearby states like West Virginia and New York, and can be “difficult” for many people to understand.
“It’s all really complicated,” Kelly said. “There’s nothing easy about all this.”
