Why do so many SC liquor stores have red dots outside?
Living in South Carolina, red dots are ubiquitous. Found in strings of up to three, these brightly-colored circles announce that alcohol is sold inside.
Past the three red dots on the windows of Stop N Save in Myrtle Beach, Nick Patel looks out onto bottles of tequila and triple sec.
“You can see (the dots) everywhere, I mean, all liquor stores. But the reason, I don’t know,” Patel said.
Standing outside of Mona Lisa Beverage down the road, manager Michael Zora said that the circles act as a logo.
“If somebody’s looking for liquor, you look at the dots. It’s faster than like reading ‘liquor store,’” Zora said.
If you travel to North Carolina or Georgia, these signs all but disappear — this is a uniquely South Carolinian symbol.
The red dots date back to just after World War II and came from the Palmetto State’s unique liquor laws, wrote Robert Moss, the Charleston-based author of Southern Spirits: 400 Years of Drinking in the American South.
In 1945, Charleston sign painter Doc Wansley allegedly became the first to include the red circles in liquor store advertisements. When creating a sign, Wansley was restricted by recent regulations on alcohol advertising in South Carolina, which permitted only the words “retail liquor dealer” in 3-inch-tall text.
Allegedly inspired by the Lucky Strike cigarette logo, Wansley painted a bright red circle around the tiny text to catch the attention of passers-by.
And it worked.
Shops around South Carolina picked up the practice of the red dot — six years later, the Associated Press reported that “it has become universal,” as quoted by Moss.
The symbol became so ubiquitous that in 1968, the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Board (ABC) wanted to ban it, saying red dots counted as advertising, according to University of South Carolina’s S.C. Encyclopedia.
Currently, liquor advertising regulations have relaxed and the red circles are now a friendly reminder of South Carolina’s unique history.
This story was originally published October 26, 2023 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Why do so many SC liquor stores have red dots outside?."
