Dubai Municipality’s alcoholic drink edict little known

Staff Reporter / 10 August 2013

Despite a Dubai Municipality order asking retailers to pull out two flavours of a popular iced tea drink due to the unpermitted levels of alcohol content found in them, many small stores are unaware of the edict.

 Bottles of Snapple drink displayed at a petrol station store in Dubai.— KT Photo by Juidin Bernarrd
The municipality said it had sent a notice to supermarkets, department stores and corner shops about four days ago instructing them to remove two flavours of American drink Snapple, for breaching the permitted percentage of alcohol content.
The notice that was sent to stores and supermarkets said the two flavours, “fruit punch mixed fruit drink” and “peach flavoured tea”, contained 0.48 per cent and 0.05 per cent of alcohol respectively — above the 0.03 per cent limit.
But as discovered by Khaleej Times, while the big chains such as Spinneys and Carrefour seem to have complied with the orders, some of the smaller neighbourhood stores had not taken the drinks off the shelf in compliance with the order.
At one neighbourhood chain Blue Mart, along Marina Walk, the shelves were stocked as usual with bottles of Snapple Raspberry Tea — an acceptable flavour — being clearly available.
The manager at Blue Mart had not heard of any diktat that prohibited stocking the two offending varieties of Snapple. He said the store had not removed the flavoured drink — which was no longer available on the shelves - but had simply sold out and not had their stocks replenished.
Upon inquiring at the branch of Spinneys in Marina, Khaleej Times was told that all Spinneys across the UAE have been told to “never” stock the controversial drink. “We have not been getting the stock and have been instructed to inform customers that they should buy another brand or flavour, as no branch of Spinneys is allowed to stock Snapple,” said a member of the staff at Spinneys, Marina. At a smaller store Baqer Mohebi, a chain with four outlets in Dubai, it’s the same story. “We used to get Snapple supplied by True Bell who was the distributor, but now we are not getting any drinks from them.” The manager at Baqer though, did not know about a municipality order, and was hopeful that in another month, a different supplier, called NDD, would take over the distribution rights, and customers could still stock up on all varieties of Snapple.
Jagdish Sihota, 24, a shopper at Carrefour, said he found the diktat “ridiculous”.

“How much really is 0.48 per cent? It makes no sense placing the drink in the alcoholic beverage category for having such a little quantity of alcohol in it.” Sihota said he himself was not a drinker of Snapple and preferred aerated beverages, but he believed the order was “unreasonably harsh”. He said he felt sympathy for Snapple-drinkers. -nivriti@khaleejtimes.com