If you live in Mississippi and want a bottle of your favorite whiskey, vodka or wine, it could be hard to find.
Since January, when the state liquor agency got rid of outdated conveyor belts at its warehouse north of Jackson, it has been struggling to make timely deliveries to restaurants, bars and liquor stores across Mississippi.
Orders have been taking up to three weeks to arrive, and many business owners have complained of frustrating shortages and bare shelves.
Some have been urging lawmakers to privatize the state-run liquor distribution system.
“I don’t think people realize how much of a statewide issue this is,” said Anne Marie Smith, the operations manager at Raines Cellars, a wine and spirits store in Flora, Miss. “It’s a disaster.”
Ms. Smith testified at a legislative hearing on the liquor delivery problems in February and was frustrated that state officials had not fixed them months later.
“There’s no accountability for it,” Ms. Smith said. “None.”
She ordered Tito’s vodka from the state warehouse on March 28 and was told it had shipped on Thursday — nearly three weeks later, she said.
“And I’m willing to put money on it that I’m not going to get it today,” Ms. Smith said in an interview on Friday.
Mississippi Alcoholic Beverage Control, which runs the state’s liquor distribution warehouse in Gluckstadt, said the problems began in early January when it paused shipping for several days to conduct a scheduled count of its inventory.
During that time, the agency said, it replaced the warehouse’s aging conveyor belt system with a new system that packed orders directly onto pallets and required new warehouse management software.
“When shipping resumed, several technical issues were encountered even though the system had been tested,” the agency said in a statement. “This resulted in delivery delays of approximately three weeks.”
An ice storm in late January closed roads in northern Mississippi, which added to shipping delays in that region, the agency said.
The technical issues have been fixed and the warehouse is operating at full capacity, shipping seven days a week with additional staff members working extended hours, the agency said.
But over the past six weeks, retail orders have increased by more than 30 percent, making it hard to reduce the backlog.
This week, there were 172,176 cases of alcohol awaiting delivery, with an average delivery time of just over 17 days, state data showed.
That is an improvement from early March, when the wait for a delivery was just over 25 days. But it is a far cry from early January, when deliveries were being made in about three days.
Mississippi Alcoholic Beverage Control said that it expected shipments to return to normal “within the coming weeks” and that it would complete construction of a larger, state-of-the-art warehouse by the end of the year.
Steven O’Neill, the owner of The Manship, a restaurant in Jackson, said the liquor delays reminded him of the problems restaurants faced when supply chains broke down during the early days of the Covid pandemic.
“It’s been tough for everyone,” he said. “It’s not a great situation. It’s working itself out slowly. We just have to grin and bear it and get through it.”
To keep the bar stocked at Weidmann’s, a restaurant in Meridien, Miss., that opened in 1870, the owner, Charles Frazier, said he has been buying bottles of popular brands like Jack Daniel’s and Maker’s Mark directly from local liquor stores, which is allowed under Mississippi law.
But those stores often charge more than Mississippi Alcoholic Beverage Control and many are facing their own supply shortages.
Mr. Frazier said he also been revising the wine list at Weidmann’s frequently to account for wines that have not been delivered.
“My personal opinion is the state should get out of selling liquor to people,” Mr. Frazier said. “They should privatize it and let brokers take over. But it’s not, unfortunately, what I think is in the cards for us.”
Jamie Farris, an owner of Lincoln Road Package Store in Hattiesburg, Miss., said he has had trouble keeping Tito’s, Crown Royal whiskey and Don Julio tequila on the shelves.
“Orders come in and they go out the door,” he said.
Some liquor stores have been panic-buying products in hopes of keeping them in stock, Mr. Farris said.
“We’re just telling customers we’ve got it on order, we’re just waiting on it,” Mr. Farris said on Friday. Most have been understanding, he said. But some have left, determined to find their favorite brand.
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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