The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board on Monday will open most liquor stores across the state for curbside pickup, including nine in Beaver County.

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board on Monday will open most liquor stores across the state for curbside pickup, including a total of nine in Beaver County.

The state opened two Beaver County Fine Wine and Good Spirits stores and dozens of others statewide this week, leading to a spike in demand, according to control board spokesperson Shawn Kelly.

Pennsylvania liquor stores fulfilled more than 38,000 orders and raked in about $3.64 million in the first four days of curbside sales, Kelly said. Fine Wine and Good Spirits stores fulfilled more than 33,000 online orders for nearly $3.2 million from Saturday to Wednesday, too, and earned more than $7 million in online sales from April 1 to April 23 — $2 million more than its online sales during the entire 2018-19 fiscal year.

In Beaver County, nine stores will open for limited curbside service.

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board said 565 of the state’s nearly 600 Fine Wine and Good Spirits stores will take a limited number of orders on a first-call, first-serve basis. Stores will be open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

Customers may place limited orders over the phone and will be given a time and date to pick it up. Payment by credit card will be required by phone; all curbside pickup sales are final.

The decision to open some stores for pickup comes after hordes of Pennsylvanians have flooded liquor stores in nearby states recently, as well as regularly crashing the state’s online fulfillment efforts. Some counties in West Virginia and Ohio are now prohibiting sales to out-of-state residents.

The stores were closed March 17 as part of Gov. Tom Wolf’s efforts to stem the spread of COVID-19. On March 16, wine and liquor sales broke a decade-long, single-day record of $29.9 million. Some employees have now returned to help fulfill online and curbside orders.

Some customers, including in Beaver County, were met with busy signals this week when attempting to place orders amid the demand surge. Angel Sneed, 28, of Ambridge, said she called seven or eight stores before finally ordering on Thursday in southern Allegheny County.

"Unless you stocked up a month ago, it’s been just impossible to find even just a small bottle to make a cocktail," she said.

PLCB chairman Tim Holden said they’re working on improving the long wait times.

"After learning from our experiences this past week, we’ve made improvements to process orders faster, expand the hours we take orders by phone, and be more flexible in scheduling pickups," he said.