Systembolaget - Alcohol Monopoly And Guilt Trip Provider

Systembolaget is the name of the Swedish Alcohol Retail Monopoly.(That is it's official English title.) If you are unfamiliar with the "company" here is a brief overview.

The only place you can buy liquor, beer, wine, and anything else containing alcohol in Sweden is at a Systembolaget. (However, beer that is weaker than 3.5% can be sold in grocery stores.) There are more than 400 actual Systembolaget shops in this country and more than 500 mini-stores. A mini store being a Systembolaget controlled area of another shop, such as a grocery store where you can buy wine etc., these are found mainly in very small towns.

Systembolagets come in two flavors, Stalin era Russia and normal. The Stalin era Russia version requires you to take a number and wait in line. When it is finally your turn you go up to a counter and tell the clerk how much of what you want. This is a rather annoying procedure because what Systembolaget wants you to do more than anything else is, check this out, not drink. (This may seem strange considering the staff is highly trained and expected to answer any and all questions involving alcohol. Such as, "Hej, I'm having a parmiddag tonight, and I plan to make köttbullar and potatismos with ketchup as a sauce. Which wine would you recommend I serve with it?") After you've ordered your stash the clerk goes off into the back of the cave and rounds up your order, comes back, plonks it down in front of you and then demands half your paycheck. Meanwhile everyone else in the store is pretending to look at the different bottles around the shop, which are securely stored behind glass, while what they are really doing is eyeing you up to see whether or not you bought more than they will. You then hurriedly stuff your bottles into the omnipotent little green bags they have and quickly get out of there and back into the safety of the streets.

The normal version of Systembolaget, which is becoming more and more commonplace, involves actual shelves and carts and baskets. You go in and put your own stuff in your own carrying device, yes they let you handle the goods before purchasing them, and then bring it all up to a checkout counter where you hand over half your paycheck. No gawkers, no que numbers, and no feeling like being a prisoner asking for more gruel for lunch. (I used to walk 5 extra blocks for this privilege so I could read the back of the beer bottles before I bought them.)

Systembolaget is closed on Sundays and all major holidays. Until recently they were also closed on Saturdays. Normal weekday hours are 10AM-6PM, with the exception of Thursday and Friday when many stores are open till 7PM. Some of the larger stores are actually open till 8PM! On Saturdays SB is generally open till 1PM but many of the stores are open till 3PM. There was one exception to all of this at one time and that was the SB at the international airport that serves Stockholm. It was open till 8PM everyday except Sunday as I recall. It has since closed, although the myth of Stockholmers undertaking the 45 minute trip via taxi so as to be able to buy some beer on a Saturday afternoon still lives on.

As I mentioned earlier Systembolaget doesn't want you to drink. According to their website they exist for one reason, are you ready for this, "To minimize alcohol-related problems by selling alcohol in a responsible way, without profit motive." They don't advertise, considering they are a monopoly they don't have to, but they do occasionally take out full pages in the newspaper for the sake of giving everyone in the country a guilt trip for ever buying anything there. They are also against the promotion of alcohol in every way. Even to the point where they would not allow you to buy a six pack of beer in a six pack holder. (The brand logo on the outside was seen as a form of promotion. They seem to have become a bit more relaxed about this now.) You are not allowed to run ads for any form of alcoholic beverage on TV, or have billboards, signs around town, on busses, in subways, etc. Systembolaget does not offer chilled beverages because that is seen as favoritism towards specific brands. They would have to keep everything in the store cold to be fair, so instead nothing is cold.

Essentially it is legal to drink alcohol, but no one is going to admit that it is OK, even though everyone is thinking the same thing: Why can't we buy alcohol in the grocery store like in every other country in Europe? (Except Finland which has a similar system with the much cooler name Alko.

Systembolaget merits itself on one thing. And they love to point it out when anyone even whispers the idea of getting rid of the last great Swedish monopoly. Their one positive attribute, and their battle cry, is that they have the ability to offer a much wider range of brands than regular retail stores would if they were given the chance to sell alcohol. This is based on the shear volume in which they import products, which in turn allows them to have a very wide selection. And, as much as I'd like to say they are wrong, they're not. Not all the time anyways. The larger Systembolagets have a pretty hefty amount of choices. And if you're looking for a particular beer or bottle of wine you can always custom order it. The smaller shops, however, are not that much different than any other small liquor store to be found throughout the world. (Except for the whole taking a number and placing your order with a very non-jovial, dower looking, alcohol know-it-all thing.)

So, now that you have a brief overview of Systembolaget, I will get to my point. (If I can remember what it was...) Oh, yeah, I don't have a problem with Systembolaget, that is to say I don't have a problem with them in regards to being a store that sells alcohol. That is something they do very well, even though they want to suck at it. If you were to decide between Ted's 40 Store in East Los Angeles and Systembolaget, you'd obviously want to take the one that looks like something out of THX-1138 and not the one that looks like....well a place that sells 40's in LA. As for the opening hours, well, you get used to them. You learn to plan things in advance. Granted people complained a lot more when they were closed on Saturdays. The typical response was, "What if I end up having people around for dinner, spontaneously (something oh so Swedish), on Saturday night and I have no wine?" Now that they are open on Saturdays people are much happier. It is one of the few compromises SB has really ever made. So, all in all, the system works out alright.

Now, here are my complaints. I know you've been waiting for this to turn negative and I'm not going to let you down. First of all the green bags. I'd like to see some variation in this, maybe red, or grey. Carrying around a green bag screams, "Hey, guys. I'm going to a party. You can tell because I have two green bags, with a total of 6 cans of beer in them." If you could just give me one other alternative I'd be pleased. Granted I could always bring my own bag, but that's not the point.

Stop giving me, the customer, a guilt trip. I understand Sweden's history is written in vodka and vomit, terrible poverty due to rampant drunkenness, and statistics like: In 1829 the average person was drinking 46 liters of vodka a year, children included, and there were 175,000 distilleries in Sweden. (That is an actual statistic by the way.) So, yes, Sweden has a rather bad history when it comes to knowing when to say when. But, please explain to me why every single person has to have that constantly shoved in their face. I feel like someone is baby-sitting me, or like I ask dad to borrow the keys to the car and he says, "Sorry son, your older brother crashed that car once 8 years ago so you can't borrow it." But the worst thing about it is that they are a bunch of hypocrites, not all of them, just a bunch of them in the higher echelons of the corporation. The same people that are spending your money on anti-alcohol propaganda are the same ones wasting your money on huge parties full of, you guessed it, the dreaded poison they so despise. Systembolagets internal matters have been plagued by scandal for years, and probably will be for years to come. Why? Well, because it makes good press and because they are normal people like the rest of us.

I could complain about the price, but that would be pointless considering what everything costs in Sweden. And compared to buying a good beer in a pub, buying a good beer at SB is about 1/4 the price.

No, the thing that bothers me the absolute most about Systembolaget is their annoying smugness. The fact that they use a bunch of goody-goody, we know better than you peasants, what would you crazy people do without us to keep you in line, bullshit whenever they want to make a point. It is so steeped in corporate slippery babble it is borderline obnoxious. It is also on occasion rather immature. I'll give you some basic examples.

This is their vision (according the www.systembolaget.se): Vi skapar god dryckeskultur, där alla kan njuta av våra drycker utan att skada sig själva eller andra
Translation:We create a good drinking culture, where everyone can enjoy our drinks without hurting themselves or others.

Their explanation in English on their website as to why they, a monopoly, still exist in Sweden.

... a majority of the Swedes are supportive. Partly because they appreciate our significance for the public health. And partly because they like our stores. (We offer one of the world's biggest selections of alcoholic beverages, and our employees really know their Chardonnays from their Sauvignon Blancs.)

I could go on and on with more examples but you get the point. To really rub it in I give you the following. This is a full page advertisement Systembolaget took out in the Financial times, it is directed towards European Commission President Barasso. The ad. You have to read the whole thing to really get the just of it. I don't have a problem with what they are saying, which is essentially that Europe should really evaluate the problems and costs associated with alcohol, it's just the way they do it. They even went so far as to make a website called www.DearMrB.se, where they have a movie for Mr. Barasso. A movie you have to watch to really understand what I mean by immature. (They compare alcohol to a rhubarb, in an attempt to be funny.) They should also be shot for doing one of the biggest taboos in all of web design - the transform to full screen on enter thing.

The way I see it if you want to be taken seriously, you have to act seriously. And if you want people to respect you, you don't go about begging for their attention and making them feel like they are constantly doing something illegal. I think that if Systembolaget would just stand by what they are and leave it at that, instead of constantly over-defending themselves and continuously explaining to everyone over and over again why things would be so much worse without them, we would all just accept it (and them) and move on with our lives.

Anyways, those are my opinions. I have to end this so I can get to Systemet before they close, I need a beer after all this.

K. Panda

One more curious thing you should know about Systembolaget, and this is also on their website, is that they are in fact entitled to a profit. A limited one based on some mathematical formula. What happens when they accede that profit margin? They have to lower their prices. Seriously.