Some good news might be brewing as regards wider availability of booze in Ontario. Reports suggest that they're about to roll out LCBO kiosks in grocery stores on a wide scale across the province. This is a far cry being able to pick up a six pack at 1am at your local convenience store, but it would mark progress over the current system, which of course ties us to bricks and mortar LCBO locations (and their typically conservative opening hours).

The province originally launched the kiosk program at 10 (non-urban) grocery stores as a pilot about a year ago. Today's announcement would see expansion of the program, which is somewhat encouraging from a convenience standpoint. It's a sad state of affairs when you feel lucky that there's a Kittling Ridge outlet in the grocery store nearest you. Plenty of people would like to buy their wine and their food together (what a wild concept), and these kiosks would help to accommodate that.

The question is really whether this is enough. You know the roll out will be modest to begin with (update: seven grocery stores will initially get express kiosks), the selection won't be great, and it's dubious what kind of an extension consumers will get on opening hours via grocery stores. What do you think? Will these kiosks serve your needs/wants or should the pressure to expand booze sales beyond the LCBO still be applied heavily?

Photo by Samatha Tan in the blogTO Flickr pool