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Liquor-store manager didn't know why customers kept buying individual red plastic cups - until the police showed up

Morton Wine and Liquors found itself before the Boston Licensing Board today after a detective cited them for letting customers come into the store, fill up those cups and drink in the store.

On Aug. 3, the detective told the board at a hearing this morning, he nabbed a 20-year-old walking into the Morton Street liquor store with a red plastic cup containing "an amber alcoholic beverage." This came after a couple of days of observing empty red cups littered in the street near the store and in a trash barrel outside it.

Only restaurants with liquor licenses, not liquor stores, are allowed to have customers consuming alcohol on the premises.

Store manager Stephanie Salant acknowledged selling individual red plastic cups, but said the guy was packing a different type of red plastic cup than the kind she was selling.

Board Chairwoman Nicole Murati Ferrer asked why the store was selling single plastic cups to begin with. "It was upon request," Salant said, adding she had no idea why the cups were so popular. After Ferrer suggested it was because they made consumption of shots in public really easy, Salant said, "I was not aware that was an issue."

Salant added, however, that now that she knows to what ends individual plastic cups can be put, she no longer sells them.

In terms of alcoholic beverages, Salant denied selling anything other than sealed containers and said she never noticed the guy nabbed by the detective until he spoke up.

The board decides Thursday what action, if any, to take.

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Comments

Maybe the BPD can crack down on public drinking out of paper bag concealed cans and bottles in that area also?

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Want to know why getting a liquor license in Boston is almost impossible? Its these kind of liquor store owners that ruin it for everyone. I'm sure the owner had "no idea" that bums were buying these cups so that they could drink in the store or get hammered and pass out in the alley next door. The red cups strewn about the sidewalk could certainly not have provided any clue. There was an owner of a liquor store in Cambridge near where I used to live who would have a row of bums outside his store at 7am so he could sell them $2 bottles of vodka, which they would promptly drink right outside and then make the neighborhood disgusting for the rest of the day while they vomited, urinated, littered etc. during their inevitable panhandling parade in order to buy more booze. Thankfully, I believe that owner sold enough liquor to minors that he finally got busted and lost his license.

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