Ontario's chain convenience stores best at age checks; Refute report from foreign owners of The Beer Store

Statement from the Ontario Convenience Stores Association

TORONTO, Feb. 10, 2014 /CNW/ - Ontario's chain convenience stores, which make up the majority of the Ontario Convenience Stores Association (OCSA), dismissed a report from the foreign owners of The Beer Store that called into question their ability to check for age. Curiously, the report compiled for the privately-owned monopoly included no independent testing of The Beer Store itself.

However, a much larger age-check study - conducted by Statopex Field Marketing that included The Beer Store, LCBO and chain convenience stores - found that when tested with underage secret shoppers (age 15-18), chain convenience stores scored the highest with an 87.3% pass rate, The Beer Store next with 80.7% and LCBO last with 74.6% - meaning 1 in 4 minors successfully purchased age-restricted products from LCBO, and 1 in 5 from The Beer Store - compared to 1 in 8 for convenience stores.

In total, this more balanced Statopex study of nearly 300 stores tested 105 LCBO locations, 98 locations from The Beer Store, and 93 convenience stores.  The convenience store success rate testing for age shown in this Statopex study was consistent with Health Canada's secret shopping tests of over 300 chain convenience stores in Ontario each year.

In addition, today's report commissioned by the owners of The Beer Store relies on a skewed sample that was 80% non-chain stores, which is not representative of the Ontario Convenience Stores Association.

SOURCE: Ontario Convenience Stores Association

John Perenack, [email protected]