It’s closing time for restaurants’ takeout drinks
The Senate is scheduled to vote Thursday on a redrafted bill imposing new limitations on family shelter stays, a potential cost-controlling measure after months of record demand has eaten into the state’s finances and exerted massive pressure on shelter s
That Senate bill also contains language formaking permanent pandemic-era provisions allowing expanded outdoor dining. But unlike the House, it wouldn’t allow restaurants to continue selling alcoholic beverages to go.
Takeout drinks proved popular among consumers during the COVID-19 state of emergency, and that policy has created a conflict between restaurant industry groups that want to keep it and package store owners who view it as a threat to their bottom line.
In previous debates, the fight was over whether to allow restaurants to continue to sell drinks to go on a temporary basis. Now, after three extensions, it’s over whether to make the change permanent.
With the latest extension set to expire at the end of March, the House of Representatives included language in a supplemental budget to make thismodification to the state’s longstanding alcohol license laws permanent, along with another change that makes it easier for restaurants to serve alcohol outside.
This bid to make to-go drinks permanent has resurrected the same arguments that were presented last year, when that practice received another 12-month reprieve.
The debate goes back to the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when the state Legislature allowed restaurants to sell beer, wine, and spirits along with takeout orders. After the COVID state of emergency was rescinded in 2021, lawmakers extended drinks-to-go and outdoor dining to help restaurants recover from the pandemic.
“The pandemic is on the back burner, but the impacts are still very real. You’re still seeing restaurants that didn’t reopen,” Lesley Delaney Hawkins, former executive secretary of the Boston Licensing Board, told the Boston Herald last year at this time. “People aren’t necessarily comfortable sitting down and having dinner or lunch. This is another option that benefits the consumers and the restaurants.”
But with the prospect of to-go drinks becoming an uncomfortable fact of life, a number of liquor store owners have been calling lawmakers to argue that continuing this practice gives preferential treatment to one industry while hurting another.
But Steve Clark, head of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, has responded with a lobbying campaign of his own. Clark’s group, which testified at a recent legislative hearing on the issue, has been waging a grass-roots campaign to encouragemembers to urge their legislators to make the pandemic-era changes permanent.
Clark told the Boston Globe he doubts to-go drinks have had much of a sales impact on most package stores, since alcoholic beverages typically cost more at restaurants.
“It’s not a major revenue generator, but it’s a ‘some revenue’ generator,’’ Clark said. “It’s a little bit of revenue that’s available to restaurants at a time when it’s really hard to make a profit.’’
That contention hasn’t swayed Rob Mellion, executive director of the Massachusetts Package Stores Association, which has launched another coordinated bid to quash the idea.
He maintains his group’s independent markets and liquor stores already struggle due to the increased competition from big-box stores, along with small-bottle, “nips” bans at the municipal level.
Mellion also submits that package store owners offer an important defense against the sale of alcohol to minors, and that the quantities allowed for to-go sale in Massachusetts state law are unusually high compared to what other states allow.
To-go orders are capped at 64 ounces of spirits, 192 ounces of beer, and two bottles of wine, which must accompany a food order. These limits would be codified into a permanent law, should one be passed.
If this measure makes it to Gov. Maura Healey’s desk, she’ll probably sign it, since Healey included it in her own city-and-town assistance bill that she announced at the annualmeeting of themassachusetts Municipal Association in January.
We understand the package stores’ concerns. Already in competition with foodstore chains like Cumberland Farms for beer-and-wine business, they see drinks to-go eating away at already shrinking margins.
While we don’t see delivering alcohol with food orders contributing to a measurable rise in underage consumption, we also don’t see a sustainable demand for pricey wine, beer and spirits orders added to an already substantial meal delivery fee.
Especially with the virtually universal resumption of in-person dining.
Given the present COVID-19 environment, we believe drinks to-go have served their purpose.
It’s time to put that portable, potable practice back on the shelf.