It’s Friday afternoon. Two students can’t wait for class to be over so happy hour can begin. Three fraternity brothers head to a nearby liquor store to buy alcohol for a party. A first-year and her best friend buy alcohol for the first time with their new fake IDs. Around SMU, or any college campus, selling alcohol is a big business.
“About 30 percent of our business comes from SMU students,” said Mike Todora, store manager of Parkit Market at Greenville Avenue and University Boulevard.
Although Todora’s store and many other liquor stores in the area benefit from SMU’s business, they must also take higher precautions to ensure that they don’t sell alcohol to minors. According to the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code, if a retailer knowingly sells alcohol to a minor, it can face as much as a $10,000 fine and have its license revoked. However, a retailer cannot be held responsible if a minor falsely represents himself to be 21 years old with an apparently valid driver’s license.
In order to protect themselves, some stores such as Parkit Market take extra precautions to protect themselves. At Todora’s store, employees are required to swipe IDs through a reader that checks the magnetic strip on the back for authenticity.
“There are a lot of fake IDs out there that look real, but each real ID has a magnetic pattern that can’t be duplicated,” Todora said.
When employees at Parkit Market discover a customer trying to use a fake ID to buy alcohol, they are instructed to confiscate it and call the police and the TABC. The store usually confiscates one to two fake IDs a week, Todora said.
“We don’t get too many, but we have a reputation for checking pretty well,” he said.
Other stores are not as stringent as Parkit Market when checking IDs. Visits were made to five local liquor stores to see if they would sell alcohol without checking ID. The secret shopper pretended to have lost her ID to see if the clerks would sell her alcohol anyway. If the store refused, she pretended to eventually find it.
Only one of the stores, S-n-S Liquor on Mockingbird Lane, followed Todora’s lead and scanned the ID. Another store, GoodyGoody Liquor on Greenville, told the secret shopper that they would not accept out-of-state IDs. All of the remaining stores asked for identification, although some barely glanced at it.
“With all these college kids around, you really have to be on your guard,” Todora said.
Even on their guard, SMU business treats liquor storeowners very well, either way.
Senior Staff Writer Meredith Chapin contributed to this article.
