Businesses can't renew $20 state-issued alcohol purchasing cards due to the shutdown. Shutdown could leave Minnesota dry

The MillerCoors brands of beer have been ordered off the shelves and Minnesota residents could lose all access to beer and other booze due to the two-week-old state government shut down.

The Star Tribune of Minneapolis reported on Wednesday that bars, restaurants and stores across the state are unable to replenish their liquor and beer supplies because they can’t renew $20 state-issued alcohol purchasing cards.


And a state Department of Public Safety spokesman told the paper that the law requires beer labels in the MillerCoors corporate family — which includes the Blue Moon, Keystone and Molson brands — must be removed from Minnesota store shelves immediately because the company’s brand license has lapsed.

“I would suspect within days to see that product leave the shelves,” said Doug Neville, the Department of Public Safety spokesman.

Cigarette sales could also stop by Labor Day if no deal is reached by then.

And with Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton barnstorming the state while GOP leaders who control the state house and senate yet to publicly propose a long-term budget deal, hopes for a settlement are no better than they were before government shut down at midnight July 1.

No meetings between the two sides are scheduled.

An inability to replenish beer stocks would crush bars that failed to renew purchasing cards before the deadline. The Star Tribune reported the Ugly Mug, near the Minnesota Twins stadium in Minneapolis, doesn’t have enough beer to finish the baseball season.

For now, he still sounded nice about the problem.

“Our inventories are diminishing rapidly over the next month,” owner Erik Forsberg told the paper. “When [the Twins are] back on Thursday and people can’t get Budweiser and they can’t get whatever, they’re just going to go somewhere else.”

The state-caused alcohol shortage – which would lead to mass social upheaval in beer-mad Wisconsin to its east – will also stop sales of Miller and Coors products in Minnesota because the brands’ parent company neglected to renew its three-year state license to sell their products before government shut down. KSTP-TV in the Twin Cities reported state officials have given the company days to remove their products from store shelves.

Owners of and representatives from the state’s bars and restaurants appealed to a court-appointed special master Tuesday to allow them to keep selling alcohol once their purchasing cards expire. And one Republican state senator, John Howe, urged Dayton to use his executive authority to order that expired alcohol purchasing cards remain valid so stores can continue to sell beer.

“The governor keeps insisting he wants more revenue, but if he doesn’t instruct his administration to address this issue, he’ll be chasing revenue out of the state,” Howe said in a statement.