Double D Liquor Store has new owners, but the “double-D” tradition will continue

by Julie Berg-Raymond

If it weren’t for the fact that Don Blocker knows almost everyone in town, people might not realize that this past weekend marked the end of an era - and the beginning of a new one - for a long-time business in Waukon.
Double D Liquor Store is under new ownership; but the name will stay the same. The “D”s that once stood for brothers Don and Dennis will now, instead, stand for Dillon Dietrich of Waukon. He and his wife, Nicole, took over ownership of the business Monday, January 18.

The “double-D” tradition isn’t going to be continuing in name only, though. “Dennis and Don have been like family to me since I was 14,” Dietrich says. His brother and several of his cousins have worked for the Blocker brothers over the years; Dietrich, himself, had been working at the brothers’ other business, Waukon Redemption and Ice, for four years when he purchased it from them in 2008. “They taught me how to run a successful business, how to treat people and just be a good person,” he says.

The Blockers approached Dietrich in November of last year about the possibility of purchasing the liquor store. “They kind of offered it to me,” he says. “I’ve always said I’d be interested. I’d joke, ‘I bought one business, I can buy the other!’”

Dietrich says he has no plans to change anything. “We’re going to keep offering the lowest prices in Allamakee County,” he says. While he runs the liquor store, his father, Todd, will take over management of the redemption center.

TIME FOR A CHANGE
Don Blocker has been running Double D Liquor Store since 1985. He and his brother purchased the store at the tail-end of yet an earlier era, when Iowa was still one of the original “monopoly” states that had direct control over the wholesale and retail distribution of all alcoholic beverages, except beer. “This was a state liquor store, before,” Blocker says, adding that the state’s Alcoholic Beverages Division still controls the wholesaling of liquor.

After working 70 to 80 hours a week for more than three decades, Blocker says, “it’s time. I’ve been here 35 years. I turned 64 last month. It’s been very good; it’s just time. My health is good, and I want to be able to visit the grandchildren more often and do more hunting and fishing.”

He and his wife, Dawn, have two daughters and five grandchildren. Dawn has been a nurse at Winneshiek Medical Center for 44 years, and she is retiring April 1.

Blocker says he’ll keep working full-time at the liquor store for two to three months, helping Dietrich through the transition. Then, he says, he’ll probably work there part-time. “I just can’t sit around,” he says. “I’m not a sitter. I’ll find some part-time work.”

Blocker says the best part of owning the store all these years has been “the people. We’d truly like to tell our customers that we appreciate them so much. We’ve made a lot of friends.”

The relationship Blocker has built with customers over the years is one of the things Dietrich most admires about him; and it’s another tradition he wants to carry on. “I think Don knows everyone in town. I already know a lot of people who come here; but I’m looking forward to meeting new people, too,” Dietrich says. “And I’m excited to keep a family-owned business in Waukon.”

If this change of business ownership seems almost fated, it might not surprise anyone to learn that Dietrich and his wife have two children, both boys - and, yes, “double-Ds” by name: Dayton, 6, and Dexter, 3.