What’s in store after pandemic?

This viral pandemic has forced a multitude of changes in our behavior, from the way we greet each other to how we work and study. The common thread in these alterations to our prior daily habits can be capsulized in one word — distance.

Remote has taken control of our lives. While online shopping had already become commonplace, it’s exploded in the year since we’ve been dealing with COVID-19.

It’s even crept into the way we purchase alcoholic beverages.

That’s an inescapable fact according to state Treasurer Deb Goldberg, who oversees the Alcohol Beverages Control Commission. That agency indicated that coronavirus-spurred, direct-to-consumer alcohol deliveries have increased threefold, despite the fact that package stores — deemed essential — remained open for business.

In Greater Boston, that facilitator market is dominated by Drizly, a company started by two Boston College students in 2013 that ridehailing and delivery service Uber purchased for $1.1 billion last month.

Jen Whitman, a spokesperson for Drizly, said Goldberg’s projections track with the company’s own figures. Thanks to what Goldberg described as the tireless work of the agency’s inspectors to “vet direct shipment companies, prevent unlawful third-party deliveries, and collect excise taxes,” the ABCC remains on track to generate $5.1 million in direct revenue in fiscal year 2022, matching the previous fiscal year’s total.

That’s despite the disclosure that about 13% of alcohol-license holders, including manufacturers and wholesalers, have not renewed for 2021. It will be interesting to see if the convenience of purchasing groceries, meals — and spirits — remotely remains the new normal once this pandemic no longer holds us hostage.