Is the Northfield Municipal Liquor Store as profitable as it could be?

Last week’s Strib South section had a story titled Savage fights to restore liquor profits

Fighting back against a plunge in profits, Savage is preparing to shake up its municipal liquor operation — and market itself more aggressively… With Matthies retiring, the city is not interested in promoting from within. It is seeking an outsider with a canny eye toward promotional magic, in particular the use of social media to generate buzz.

The Northfield Municipal Liquor Store (the Muni) doesn’t have an active web presence where it promotes its products. It’s not yet using social media, though to be fair, I couldn’t find many Munis that were. The liquor operations managers for both Eden Prairie Liquor and Edina Liquor have blogs, Richfield Liquor has a Facebook page, and Farmington Liquor posts updates on the City’s Facebook page (example here).  Savage Liquor has a Facebook page and one of its two stores has a Twitter feed but they’re not using them very well. Compare those munis use of social media to Haskell’s website, Facebook page, and Twitter feed.

But beyond the use of social media, the Strib article on Savage Liquor had this:

The city is also turning a cool eye on costs. Officials note for instance that Savage is the only city with just two stores to have a person with Matthies’ title and status. As he throttles back his involvement, a replacement will take a humbler role.

Saving nearly $60,000 in the short term, the city is expected to shift from a civil-service grade 14 "liquor operations director" and grade-10 "assistant liquor operations director" to a grade-11 "facility manager" and grade-8 "store manager." There have also been outright cuts in staff over the past two years.

I don’t know what the civil-service grades are for Northfield Muni’s Department Manager Stephen DeLong and staff but I’ll see what I can find out.

The Northfield City Council and the Ad Hoc Finance Study Group have been searching for additional sources of revenue for two years but I don’t think they’ve examined the Muni’s operations.