Liquor Control Board of Ontario

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Liquor Control Board of Ontario
Régie des alcools de l’Ontario

Company type	Crown agency
Industry	Retail
Founded	1927; 97 years ago (1927)
Headquarters	Toronto, Ontario , Canada
Number of locations	677 stores (2020–21)[1]
Area served	Ontario
Key people	Carmine Nigro (Chair)[2] George Soleas (President and CEO)[3]
Products	Liquor sales and distribution to both consumers and businesses
Revenue	CA$7.21 billion[1] (2020-21)
Net income	CA$2.54 billion[1] (2020-21)
Number of employees	8000+[4]
Website	lcbo.com

The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) is a Crown agency that retails and distributes alcoholic beverages throughout the Canadian province of Ontario.^[5] It is accountable to the Legislative Assembly through the minister of finance.^[5] It was established in 1927 by the government of Premier George Howard Ferguson to sell liquor, wine, and beer.^[6] Such sales were banned outright in 1916 as part of prohibition in Canada.^[7] The creation of the LCBO marked an easing of the province's temperance regime. By September 2017, the LCBO was operating 651 liquor stores.^[8]

The LCBO maintained a quasi-monopoly on the trade in alcoholic beverage sales in Ontario for nearly a century after its creation: for most of this time, LCBO stores were the only retail outlets licensed to sell alcohol in Ontario, with the notable exceptions of beer (The Beer Store had a quasi-monopoly on retailing beer during most of this period) and a number of wine shops,^[9] which had once been relatively diverse but had largely consolidated into two major chains by the 2010s: the Wine Shop and Wine Rack.^[10] Many of these independent outlets were located on-site at wineries, breweries or distilleries themselves, with Wine Shop and Wine Rack locations often located within grocery stores.^[10] Because Ontario is Canada's most populous province, with over 15 million people, or almost 40% of the nation's population, LCBO's quasi-monopoly status made it one of the world's largest purchasers of alcoholic beverages.^{[dead link][11]}

In December 2015, the LCBO authorized some supermarkets to sell cider, wine, and beer within their grocery aisles, substantially weakening their and The Beer Store's long near-monopoly statuses.^[12][13] As of December 9, 2016, nearly 130 grocery stores had been licensed to do so; 450 were expected to be licensed by 2020.^[14]

The LCBO remains the chief supplier of alcoholic beverages to bars and restaurants in Ontario, which are generally required by law to purchase their alcoholic products through the LCBO, The Beer Store, or directly from Ontario wineries and breweries. Beverages sold at bars and restaurants must be consumed on the establishments' premises. The LCBO was the parent company of the Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation, the only entity licensed to sell cannabis for recreational use in Ontario.^[15] This is no longer true following the passage of the Cannabis Statute Law Amendment Act, 2018.^[16]