To help process online orders, workers will be back on the job at many state-owned wine and liquor stores, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board said Thursday.

The stores will not be open to the public.

Gov. Tom Wolf’s office gave the OK to reopen more than 100 of the state system’s 600 stores to help with online fulfillment, a PLCB spokeswoman said.

Wolf ordered the stores shuttered at close of business March 17 as part of the effort against covid-19. On March 16, the day the closures were announced, wine and liquor sales hit $29.9 million — a record high for single-day sales in at least a decade.

The store closings have been widely unpopular, as the state’s three fulfillment centers struggled to keep up with the online demand and the website buckled under increased traffic.

But now, some retail employees are getting called back, along with contractors. The sites will be operated under enhanced sanitation and social distancing measures, limiting the number of employees per location.

Tim Holden, chair of the Liquor Control Board, said the goal is to have “121 fulfillment centers picking and packing e-commerce orders by this weekend.”

The board has reopened 46 sites in recent days, and plans to open another 26 on Friday. Meanwhile, access to the e-commerce website is randomized to avoid overwhelming the site with traffic, he said.

“While consumer interest and site traffic continue to outpace our ability to process orders, we ask consumers’ patience as we explore options to serve our customers while honoring public health guidance during this unprecedented disruption,” said Holden in a statement. “We believe that continuing to expand access to FineWineAndGoodSpirits.com in a controlled manner will allow us to provide access to consumers while also protecting our employees and consumers from unnecessary risk, but we acknowledge our website can’t handle the daily volume that our network of nearly 600 stores supported.”

Wendell Young IV, president of Local 1776 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, said the PLCB plan is designed to meet a crushing demand for online sales. The union represents about 3,500 of the store clerks.

“It’s all going to depend on making sure the stores are ready first, and the staff is trained first,” Young said Thursday.

Before the covid-19 crisis, online sales had been a small part of the state liquor and wine system’s $2.7 billion in annual sales.

Now, sales on the site are booming, despite its complications. In the first two weeks of April, the site sold about $2.1 million of merchandise — nearly half the $5 million it sold in the entire 2018-2019 fiscal year.

Still, the state is rapidly losing revenue from the loss of in-person sales.

Young said the liquor board has also been reconfiguring the 13 centers that it runs across Pennsylvania to fill orders for restaurants and other licensees. Those centers are not open to the public, but instead will be packaging online orders for delivery.

Young said “a couple” of those 13 so-called “warehouse stores” are now operating and the rest will be restarted gradually.

Producers, breweries, wineries and distilleries, and privately owned beer distributorships have been permitted to sell during the shutdown of nonessential businesses.

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