By Andy Young
The Aldi supermarket in the Sydney suburb of Edgecliff has had its liquor licence suspended for three days after it was found to have sold alcohol to someone aged under 18.
Liquor and Gaming NSW has suspended the store’s licence from Tuesday 12 April until Friday 14 April as a result of the sale.
The offence took place in September last year when police officers at the Edgecliff centre noticed a juvenile holding Aldi shopping bags and money being exchanged between a group of young males. After inspecting the shopping bags police found four six-packs of beer.
The minor told the officers that two of the six-packs were from one person’s home and the other two had been purchased from the Aldi supermarket in the centre. The minor said that while he had been asked for identification he had actually used a photograph of a fraudulent licence that was on his mobile phone and which had an image of himself superimposed on it.
He was subsequently allowed to purchase the alcohol. When questioned, the cashier said that he was not aware that scanned IDs were not acceptable proof of age when purchasing alcohol.
In response to the proposed sanction, Aldi had advised that its staff are trained to check the IDs of all persons who appear to be under 25 and measures taken since the incident to prevent the sale of alcohol to minors included improved training and internal auditing of store procedures. The cashier who sold the alcohol had since undertaken refresher RSA training.
A spokesperson for Aldi, told TheShout: "Aldi Australia takes the responsible service of alcohol very seriously, and we regret that in this instance, an error has been made by one of our staff members.
"All Aldi store employees are required to undertake Responsible Service of Alcohol courses ensuring they understand and are equipped to meet their legal responsibilities surrounding the sale of alcohol. Ongoing training in this area also forms part of our management strategy and training frequency has been increased in response to this incident.
"This is the first complaint of this nature across our 281 stores that sell alcohol. Aldi also engage an external organisation to undertake compliance audits in an effort to ensure correct procedures are being followed."
Under the Minors Sanctions Scheme, escalating penalties apply for selling alcohol to under 18s including liquor licence suspensions, cancellations and licensee disqualifications.