When 1776 Liquors marks its 50th anniversary next week, Tom Sousa will be able to say he’s (almost) not missed a moment in the evolution of one of Bristol’s most successful businesses. The General Manager joined the team as a stockboy in September, 1973 — three months after it opened. He was still in high school. Sousa would take on a management role in 1982.

“When we opened we claimed to have 1,776 bottles of inventory,” he said. “Now we're over 8,000. It's insane how much has changed.”

Sousa can remember one of his first assignments: building a display of Budweiser beer. “Back then, Budweiser, Schlitz, and Narragansett had basically the entire market,” he said. “There were no microbrews, none of these other things were even heard of. And I remember building that Budweiser display, and it was $5.99 a case.”

The same thing was true of the wine inventory. “No one knew about Cabernet, Chardonnay — they were called table wines, they came in jugs, and your choices were burgundy, rose, or white. Boone Farm was big back then.”

Ah, the good old days. With such a relatively limited selection, you would think that inventory would have been far simpler to manage, but thanks to computers, the complete opposite is true.

1776 was founded by Caesar Brito; his great-grandson Mat, who joined the team in 2000, is the 4th generation of Britos to have a hand in the store. “It’s always been a family business, from day one,” said Mat. With a shorter rear-view than Sousa, Mat remembers the days that Lowenbrau was everyone’s beer of choice. “Trends change so fast now, it’s hard to keep up,” he said.

When the store was first opened, it was smaller, and its main entrance faced Metacom Avenue. That changed with a major renovation in the early 1990’s, which saw the building reoriented with a north-facing entrance and an expanded footprint. More recently, they added a Rich and Rare Room, where the priciest bottle — a scotch that is almost as old as the store itself — will run you close to $8,000.

As much of a Metacom Avenue landmark as 1776 is, with their distinctive red, white, and blue logo, according to Sousa, it almost looked very different, somewhere else.

“A little piece of information that very few people know is that when when Caesar Brito was awarded this license, it was his intention to put the store in the plaza on Gooding Avenue and call it Caesar’s Liquor Palace, with statues and water fountains, like Las Vegas.”

A hired consultant convinced Brito to locate on Metacom to capture that traffic, and to capitalize on the patriotism of Bristol and the impending bicentennial — so 1776 Liquors it became.

A trip to 1776 will extra special on Friday, June 30 from 4 to 7 p.m. “I’ve got Andre Arsenault coming in to play, and I actually just booked another guy to come play electric guitar,” said Mat. “So that’ll be kind of cool, a little band in here. And we’ll be giving away free samples to people when they come in the door, and there will other tastings as well.”

“I feel blessed and honored to have worked for the Britos, first Caesar, then Joe Sr. and Joe Jr.,” said Sousa. “They are such great people and great businessmen, and it has been a pleasure to work for them over the years.”