At least here in New England all the grocery stores were closed (by law) on Sundays. Part of our Puritan heritage. You'd have to go out to eat if you didn't have stuff at home. Blue laws of one form or another were very prevalent until roughly 1970, heck we prohibited liquor sales on Sunday until just a few years ago.
Liquor sales on Sunday? 2024 and you cannot buy liquor in the bottle on Sunday. The law was changed only a few years ago, to 10 AM, to allow the purchase of any alcohol on Sunday, it was previously noon on Sunday.
Root cause of that change, tourists complaining they couldn't get a Bloody Mary with their Sunday brunch.
Until 2022 if we went to a brewery, I couldn't go to the bar and order a pint for myself and wife, and carry them back to the table. I could order, and pay for them, but not allowed to "carry" them. I either had to leave one sitting on the bar and take one to the table, and come back for the second one. A few establishments would actually carry the second one for me, specifically the Sierra Nevada Brewery in Mills River, NC. The same was true for mixed drinks and wine.
Happy hours are illegal, though they can run a special for an entire day. Many breweries have a discounted or half price deal on normally slow days, typically Monday or Tuesday, or run a single beer at a discounted price, as long as the discount runs all day.
Beer was limited to 6% ABV until 2005, when it was raised to 15%.