Storm Boosts Sales of Ice and Booze

At the height of the Irene-induced outages earlier this week, more than 700,000 Connecticut residents were without power. At least some of them were well-provisioned.

Local liquor stores reported a noticeable uptick in business ahead of the tropical storm, though most said residents were far from concerned or frenzied. 

"I heard a meteorologist say before the storm 'make sure to grab milk, bread and a case of beer,'" said Larry Cass, the owner of in Monroe. "And I didn't even pay him. But we did see a corresponding blip in business. People knew they were going to be out of certain things and, since they knew they were probably going to lose power, we saw people shift a little less toward beer and a little more toward wine and their captain and cokes."

"When the news broke [about the oncoming storm], we were very, very busy," said Sanjiv Gupta, owner of . "We lucked out, too. This is the first time a big storm came through and we didn't lose any power. But most others did. And it seemed to me that because of the power problem, there's been less excitement this week about the long weekend."

A number of local liquor purveyors attributed the bolstered sales not just to Irene, but also to people planning ahead for their Labor Day parties, though as Gupta points out sales have waned since. In fact, it appeared many were treating the storm light-heartedly and were surprised by the fallout afterward.

"I don't think people knew what was coming," said John Akin, the wine manager at Glenro. "I don't think they were stocking up because they thought they were going to be stranded and would need alcohol for days. I think they were just gearing up for the holiday and trying to load up for their parties over two weeks. But they were in survival mode on Monday. They weren't thinking 'oh God, I need a drink.' They were thinking 'oh God, what am I going to do?'"

"It was more that everyone was making a joke of it, saying 'I'd better stock up before the storm,'" said Peter Moeller, the general manager of in Danbury. "Now, it's more of a panic that they need ice. There are still people without power around here and they're still snatching up a bunch of ice for their coolers so they can have some food...we couldn't keep ice in the store all week. Every time we'd get it, an hour later it'd be gone."

The bigger story, as Moeller pointed out, did seem to be the mad rush for ice and water as residents dealt with extended power outages this week. Adding to the frenzy was the trouble many stores had in getting ice from their distributers. Crystal Ice Company in Norwalk, for instance, is a huge regional distributer and was out of power and underwater for days following the storm.

"Everybody was asking for ice and I ran out pretty quickly on Monday," said David Zanowiak, owner of the , who uses the Crystal Ice Company. "I called a couple places and my regular guys and I finally got through on Tuesday morning. They'd just gotten power back and were flooded out and getting behind. They finally got out [to help resupply us] on Wednesday."

"My ice guy, who is fantastic, didn't have a generator," Cass said. "So I got 160 bags of ice on Tuesday and sold them in about an hour or two. We're on the decline for people without power, now, so the ice demand has been a bell curve...but there's no doubt that people were mistaken about how long their fridges and freezers were going to be out."

Cass said residents didn't necessarily underestimate the strength or severity of Irene but, rather, didn't believe it would take so long for power to be restored. The lengthy outages many have been forced to weather have put a damper on late-summer festivities.

"I think people thught it was going to be more a structural thing than a power loss thing," Cass said. "There was a sense of urgency beforehand, where every car I went out to had five or six bags of groceries in it. People were stocking up. But now instead of worrying about Labor Day, people are worried about getting power back and trees cut down."

As of Sunday morning, outage figures were down to just under 30,000 according to CL&P. So a week after Irene, a sense of normalcy is returning to the region.

But the last week does beg the question: were the residents who stocked up before the storm any better off?

"I can't remember anyone saying it was fun to be without power," Zanowiak said.