Wholesalers

Under state law that dates to Prohibition, it's illegal for a boutique winery in Napa to send a bottle of its finest to a connoisseur living in Maryland. Why is this still on the books? Chiefly because allowing direct sales to consumers threatens the long-standing monopoly held by wholesalers. Oh, the middlemen may claim that letting wineries ship to consumers would encourage underage drinking, but that's just not true. More than two-thirds of states allow direct shipments, and it's easy enough to make sure the deliveries are signed by someone age 21 and older.

The licensees of Tersiguel's French Country restaurant in Ellicott City were fined $500 by the Howard County Alcoholic Beverage Hearing Board and lost 138 bottles of wine to the Maryland comptroller's office because the wine was not bought legally through a wholesaler. Fernand Tersiguel, owner of the popular French restaurant in the 8200 block Main St., said yesterday that he got the wine from the family of a friend who had died. "I had it for three years," he said, until a disgruntled employee reported the wine to Howard County police, who notified the comptroller's office in September.

Jeff Grolig greets the dawn by eyeballing mounds of dead fish. Just hours earlier much of the bounty before him was in the ocean. But now it's been whisked by air and truck to the vast, damp warehouses of the Maryland Wholesale Seafood Market in Jessup, one of the largest links in the East Coast sea-to-market food chain.The market's 13 wholesalers serve as speedy, high-tech middlemen to restaurants, grocers and seafood shops throughout the East Coast. Buyers such as Mr. Grolig, who selects seafood for the Sutton Place Gourmet groceries in the Baltimore-Washington area, are one of the last links in a chain that takes seafood from far-off ports -- in the Gulf of Mexico, Greenland, California -- to diners' palates.

WASHINGTON -- The productivity of U.S. workers increased during the fourth quarter at the fastest pace in six years as companies cranked out more goods and services while labor and other costs fell, the government reported yesterday.Productivity -- a measure of how quickly and easily workers can produce goods and services -- rose at an annual rate of 4.6 percent during the final three months of 1998 after rising at a 2.5 percent pace in the third quarter, the Labor Department said."I never cease to be amazed at the ability of our flexible and innovative economic system to take advantage of emerging technologies in ways that raise our productive capacity and generate higher asset values," said Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve Board chairman.

Owners of small businesses should avoid re-inventing the wheel when it comes to coping with management problems, according to entrepreneur Donald Wilson.He said business dilemmas that seem terribly novel and unique have, in many instances, already been licked by other business people, so it pays to solicit advice. Mr. Wilson is the president and founder of Micro Wholesalers Inc., a Hunt Valley-based wholesaler of microcomputers and computer networking equipment.It's been about a year since Mr. Wilson joined The Board, an Annapolis-based organization that for a fee provides owners and directors of small companies with a forum to exchange opinions and advice based on their experiences.

Maybe it's time to cover the picnic table with newspapers, invite the family over and have that crab feast you couldn't afford over Memorial Day weekend.Crab prices have dropped in recent weeks -- by as much as $68 a bushel in at least one case -- according to a spot check of retailers and wholesalers around the state.Al Strzegowski of Al's Seafood on Eastern Boulevard in Middle River perhaps best summed up the current crab market yesterday when he said: "They're not cheap, but they are at least affordable."

Maybe it's time to cover the picnic table with newspapers, invite the family over and have that crab feast you couldn't afford over Memorial Day weekend.Crab prices have dropped in recent weeks -- by as much as $68 a bushel in at least one case -- according to a spot check of retailers and wholesalers around the state.Al Strzegowski of Al's Seafood on Eastern Boulevard in Middle River perhaps best summed up the current crab market yesterday when he said:"They're not cheap, but they are at least affordable."

Maryland's byzantine liquor laws took another turn for the convoluted worse last week. Maryland Comptroller William Donald Schaefer has decided that last year's Supreme Court ruling in Granholm v. Heald means Maryland wineries can no longer sell directly to retailers, chiefly restaurants and hotels. That's a disaster for the local wineries, relatively few of which sell through wholesalers. That's because the economics of such trade don't work - not only would it raise the cost of Maryland wine, but the local brands would likely get lost in the shuffle of the average wholesaler's inventory.

Travelers unloads some assetsAs part of its attempt to unload $1 billion in underperforming assets by year's end, the Travelers Corp. yesterday sold a large portion of its portfolio of foreclosed real estate and bad commercial loans for $634 million.The insurance company sold the properties and loans to Quantum Realty Fund of the Netherlands Antilles. The sale included 12 commercial mortgage loans and 35 foreclosed properties around the country, most of them office buildings.Sales by wholesalers dip againSales by wholesalers slipped for a second straight month in July, the Commerce Department said yesterday, while stocks of unsold goods shrank for a second consecutive month.

Alfred E. Davies, who, with his wife, operated a beer distributorship in Elkridge, died Tuesday of cancer at his home in Kingsville. He was 68.He began his career as a salesman for the Narragansett Brewing Co. after leaving college."