Every October, Governor Cuomo and the NY legislature seem to revisit the laws supporting growth of our craft beverage industry. It’s fairly refreshing to see that Governor Cuomo doesn’t just hold industry summits for entertainment value, but actually listens and puts words into action. This latest round of changes gets to the heart of operating a craft beverage business by opening up the ways you can serve and sell your stuff on premises—it isn’t just tastings (even if you don’t have a restaurant). And, the state has put money where its mouth is with funding programs to help new farm beverage businesses get up and running.
Let’s start with a quick review of where we have been on the blog:
- Last week, we looked at the evolution of the farm cidery laws over the past year or so.
- I answered the most commonly misunderstood aspect of the farm alcohol laws, whether or not a NY farm winery, brewery, or distillery needs to be on a farm.
- I took a couple of looks at the NY Farm Distillery law and what it enabled back in 2013 and how it changed from its humble beginning in 2002.
- I editorialized on the challenge of the rapidly changing NYS liquor laws and how the State Liquor Authority was going to need to adapt. I’m pleased to report that the SLA seems to be working hard to keep pace with the new initiatives.
So, what’s in these more recent changes?
The biggest change is about serving your beer, cider, liquor, and wine in your tasting room. Previously, you could taste and you could sell it in bottles or growlers to take home, but people couldn’t just kick back and enjoy a glass unless you had an attached restaurant or hospitality business. Well, now you can go ahead and order up a pint right from the tasting room. Of course, to keep things from being too simple, the same language was not adopted for each farm license. Farm breweries and wineries can serve their stuff pretty much without restriction. Farm cideries and distilleries still need to have some sort of food regularly available (apparently New York State cannot countenance drinking on an empty stomach…unless you are at a brewery or winery). But they lowered the food requirement to make it look like a few bowls of munchies on the counter might meet the requirement (regardless of whether you charge for them). This really makes things a little easier for the brewery, cidery, and winery folks, though it seemed like many who wanted to deal with full servings (and requisite staffing) didn’t really mind adding a pub menu and seating area to go with it. Where I think this is a big deal is for distilleries. Essentially, your distillery can now serve up a cocktail menu. As long as you can staff it, I think that could be an awesome revenue source and really help move product (since tasting liquor straight doesn’t really sell it well to people who don’t drink it that way).
There are a number of other changes to ease the retail outlets available to distilleries and enable branch outlets (already available to some of the other farm licensees). They also raised the production caps for the farm licenses and added a minimum production requirement for each to make sure people weren’t misusing the farm licenses for non-production businesses (given the ability to move other people’s New York labeled products).
Given my economic development geekery, I was also intrigued by the two new grant programs that came along with this law. First, is a program to help non-profits (like regional economic development authorities, chambers of commerce, and craft beverage trade associations) market New York State produced wine, beer, spirits, and hard cider. Second, is a tourism promotion grant specifically for the craft beverage industry.
Mostly, this latest round points to the fact that the law is still evolving to enable broader experimentation and flexibility for craft beverage business models in the state. I’m excited to see what comes out of it, but also caution beverage entrepreneurs to think through every aspect of expanding your services. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Have a plan.
