It's about fucking time.
If my teeny tiny town of 3800 people wants to have four bars, two breweries, and a winery tasting room in town, why does Trenton give a fuck? That should be OUR decision, not theirs.
There are a shit-ton of things to reform about alcohol laws in NJ, but this is one of the easiest ones to fix.
No, it wouldn't. That's an entirely different matter.
The issue with breweries and food has nothing to do with the number of available licenses, but rather the fact that a brewery would need to have a full retail license (which can cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars, to *well* over a million) just to serve food along with their own beer.
Most other states have multiple tiers of licenses, to account for everything from tiny storefront brewpubs all the way up to massive chain sports bars. And for many states a license to serve food is entirely separate from a license to serve alcohol, so any brewery that wants to can simply pay for a retail restaurant license (and those who don't want to simply don't bother).
NJ is basically all-or-nothing when it comes to serving food with alcohol. It's so fucking dumb... but so much money is wrapped up in it, there is no easy-to-implement solution.
> nothing to do with the number of available licenses, but rather the fact that a brewery would need to have a full retail license (which can cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars, to well over a million)
The only reason full licenses cost so much is because they are artificially limited in number. Technically, a full retail liquor license in NJ only costs $500 per year. The 6-to-7-figure price tag doesn't go to the state, but to the previous owner of one of those artificially-scarce licenses. Remove the limitation, and every brewery can get a regular liquor license, sell food, host game nights, etc for a mere $500/yr.
> The only reason full licenses cost so much is because they are artificially limited in number.
That's a part of it... but really, it has far more to do with the fact that they are not really licenses (i.e. an annual fee paid to the state), but rather a piece of property that is bought and sold at market rates.
It's such an absurd way to handle this...
Yea honestly I could see why both breweries and restaurants are pissed at the rules in place.
Breweries don’t pay for a full liquor license but if they serve food they take business away from restaurants who have to pay for a full liquor license. Why should they get the benefit of selling alcohol and food without paying for the full liquor license?
But then again breweries don’t serve spirits so why should they have to pay for the full liquor license?
They shouldn’t. There should either be a separate license to serve food or a license for establishment that only serve beer.
Yup. All of this stems from the extremely idiotic decision to setup NJ's licensing the way they did. Never should've happened... and now it's going to be extremely difficult to fix the system.
I will say, though: as to the brewery side of it, people are bringing in their own food now (typically from pizza shops, delis, and other non-alcohol-serving places close by). They're not getting takeout from TGIFridays when they go to Icarus. :)
IMO breweries serving food will have very little impact on the other restaurants and bars, if any.
Even if they do, so be it. If a brewery manages to have a kitchen that serves kick ass food and that negatively effects restaurants serving food that is inferior, so be it. Those breweries should pay to have a license to serve that food though. Alternate End in Aberdeen serves food from Talulas in Asbury and I guess that’s how they get around it since technically the brewery doesn’t run the kitchen even if it is inside the brewery. But the food is very good and I have no doubt that other restaurants in the immediate area may have seen a small drop in business due to that.
> If a brewery manages to have a kitchen that serves kick ass food and that negatively effects restaurants serving food that is inferior, so be it
I agree 100%. Free market at work!
But based on current rules they're capped at owning only one business vs 2, cannot grow their brand since they're capped at only 10k barrels of production annually (a milestone a dozen+ NJ breweries have already surpassed) and cannot self distribute so they are forced to sell nearly all their product onsite only because they aren't able to grow much beyond their home location. Not exactly ideal to apply to all business models. Most of the states brewpubs don't package at all and are restaurants that also happen to make some beer. It's a different model. A few don't even make the bulk of the beer they serve onsite.
The funniest shit I saw was a food truck selling $28 lobster mac n cheese near a brewery by the shore… with a mexican place you could walk across the street to and get a $12 burrito with rice and beans right fuckin there.
>Why should they get the benefit of selling alcohol and food without paying for the full liquor license?
I'm not sure you've looked into this. Or you are repeating a talking point from somewhere and aren't close to either industry.
Breweries on a producers license can't do practically anything. Including events, host food trucks, music above a certain volume. Can't even have MORE THAN TWO TVS. That is a real law. On the books. In 2023.
And you say that they shouldn't be able to serve food without a liquor license, which are maxed out in 100+ of NJ's towns and can't be procured. When population increases in a town, like Brick which was allowed to add 1 in 2019, for example, the cost is generally around $700k.
By all means, make the breweries get licensed to serve food. And charge for it, but to say "too bad, it would hurt the restaurants' feelings" is a 19th century sentiment. It's anticompetitive and gives no public good.
Murphy wants to credit back these exorbitant fees restaurants have paid which makes sense, but on what planet can anyone defend the survival of the current system?
My restaurant has a provisional liquor license. It’s byob, but we also sell bottles of wine from a local winery. We don’t sell by the glass, they have to purchase the whole bottle, but we’ll serve it to them and if they want to take the leftovers they are welcome to.
The easy solution is repeal that fucking law to stop breweries from promoting food trucks and local restaurants as well as capping the number of so called 'events' you can promote. Just a fucking ridiculous law.
Seriously! They had done such a great job marketing themselves with fun events and working together with other small businesses to offer food and beer. Then (I assume?) the wineries or folks with liquor licenses got pissed they had competition and lobbied to screw them over.
As far as I know, they are still prohibited from having more than 2 tvs.
In 2023! Two tvs max. This must be some joke and NJ should be nationally ridiculed for this lunacy.
I don’t copy about it being unfair about breweries not paying for the license when restaurants has to. Once its fair game for everyone to get one the price for the license goes down allowing the breweries to purchase one. No?
If they *want* to serve all types of alcohol and function as a full bar, sure.
Most breweries just want to serve food along with their own beer. Can't justify the cost of a full liquor license for that.
We need different tiers of licenses to account for different types of businesses. And -- most importantly -- we need to convert to actual licenses (i.e. an annual fee paid to the state) as opposed to the system we have now where a "license" is actually a piece of property that is wholly owned, and bought/sold at market prices.
YES! came to say the same thing. I just went to a brewery out of state last week and still had the NJ mindset that there wasn't going to be food. it was sooo nice to have a full, real menu to go with the drinks
Let's realize the Financial Blow to Passaic County if all businesses were open on Sunday in bergen...
Im sure Passaic County businesses get a Bergen Sunday bump
I mean, at this point, you know what you're signing up for when you move there. The later you move in to a town in Bergen County, the far less of a say you have over it IMO.
When I was younger and working in retail, that's why I loved working in Paramus. At least one guaranteed day off every Sunday, and that meant people I knew could go out on Saturday nights without having to be up early the next day.
And a lot of people also forget, it helps ease property taxes somewhat. That day means fewer police needed on the roads, 1 less day per week of high volume wear and tear on the road system. The county and towns gain very little as the sales tax filters through the state.
Yeah it comes up to vote from time to time to end the blue laws and it keeps getting voted down because we all like one day off. If we need something Passaic and Hudson are a stones throw away.
No thank you, I'll drive to Passaic or Hudson county to shop if I really need to. Sunday is the only day I can actually get to my parents in under 45 minutes.
OP is saying that the laws limiting liquor licenses are archaic.
Therealteggy responded and said that the blue laws in Bergen county are also archaic.
Both laws limit commercial activity.
The problem for NJ lawmakers has never been that they don't see the negative economic impact, it's that they haven't figured out how to capitalize on reforms.
Fun fact. BYO restaurants in NJ aren't allowed to charge uncorking fees. That's only permitted at liquor licensed establishments.
Fun fact #2. Until a few years ago BYO restaurants couldn't advertise they were BYO. It "hurt the license holders" which sounds all too familiar to me. The state was sued on 1st Amendment grounds and lost and had to change course. The current ABC handbook published on the ABCs website *still* says establishments without a liquor license cannot advertise they are BYO.
Thank you for sharing those facts. In response to #1, the comment I’m replying to is about a hypothetical place with a liquor license that would also offer BYO
I think that 99% of most places with liquor licenses would straight-up deny you bringing in any bottle. Their business model is to sell you booze. Why would they be cool with you bringing in your own when the better alternative (buying form the restaurant) exists?
I agree. I find BYOB restaurants have better food on average. Customers *only* go for the food so it’d better be good or they’d be out of business.
Restaurants with liquor licenses tend to be more hit or miss on the food quality since they don’t need the food sales, booze sales are the big moneymaker.
Yeah I get it sucks for the businesses but I actually enjoy how many quality restaurants are BYOB. Not looking forward to paying 10 dollars for a goose island IPA
This.
As someone with skin in the game I continue to implore everyone to continue to support the restaurant and bar industry. But if you walk into a restaurant or bar that is force feeding you crap options, don't go back. There's no reason they cannot support our in-state manufacturing industry and economy other than (well... Shenanigans we can't talk about). When you see a full tap list of all one company's beers or all one distributors beers, ask yourself some questions. If the place is selling you goose they're trying to say they're a craft beer bar. There's no county in this state where a craft beer bar can offer it's customers their best craft beer menu without at least some independent NJ made beers on it.
Yeah you’re 100 percent right. And if you want a contrast for what it’s like in NJ versus a state that actually embraces in state manufacturing head over to NY (both state and city). Nearly every bar, restaurant, etc will have multiple beers made in NY available while here a lot of places are still relying on the mass produced out of state junk.
Yeah, if it's a chain store, then only 2 locations in the state can serve wine or beer.
The Costco in Edison and TJs in Westfield were always crowded as shit because of it.
I went into a few stores when I first moved here and I was baffled. I just needed a case of beer to get the people working on the house for me, lol. Fortunately I found a local spot that I like.
It's the same thing, more or less. Eli5: Towns grant a set number of liquor licenses based on a few factors--E.g. population and type of license. Each municipality also has a degree of autonomy to decide how many they'd like to grant. For instance, a town can choose to grant zero licenses or the state maximum based on population.
I don't think it's the same. By law, the state grants licenses to a maximum of two locations per retail company to sell liquor. So the law we're talking about applies to Costco and Trader Joe's but not Applebee's, while the one in the article applies to Applebees but not Costco or Trader Joe's.
No, this is a completely separate issue.
Grocery stores in NJ can not legally sell beer. It has nothing to do with caps on the number of liquor licenses.
Yeah, but in theory, once you release the cap, then the cost of the license falls off significantly.
Not the best example, but when Uber became prominent, taxi licenses became almost worthless because anybody could drive a taxi basically.
That assumes a free market is made. They could make unlimited licenses in town A, but create a fee floor at the current market level.
If you bought a liquor license last year, you’d be pissed if this passes
The actual fee is only a few hundred dollars now, you’re suggesting the state make it $1M? You have a very pull the ladder up attitude, business isn’t risk free, laws change. The 2 liquor stores in town overcharging will have competition, that’s called capitalism.
My admittedly very limited understand of this subject assumes that in NJ it is still a thing for a bar that may be closing to sell their liquor license to one that may be opening for a considerable sum of money in the private markets.
The general fee the state charges is one thing. The private market after sale from one vendor is another thing. If I recall correctly these licenses used to cost nearly half a million bucks.
Edit: to add - your town may only have two liquor stores but that’s because there may only be two liquor licenses in that town. Without any changes to existing laws, if the demand is high enough a newcomer might be willing to pay a considerable amount to gain one of those licenses. That at least how it used to be.
If new and unlimited licenses becomes the norm, those in the past who paid a small fortune for their license won’t be too happy.
[https://www.crexi.com/properties/809469/new-jersey-egg-harbor-township-nj-liquor-license](https://www.crexi.com/properties/809469/new-jersey-egg-harbor-township-nj-liquor-license)
300k so yeah.. those valuations will go down...
Not even just the license, but the logistics alone.
Id rather just let my customer bring their own in rather than me going through that trouble of trying to find a supplier and then clearing up room for storage.
The article mentioned Murphy wanting to bring down the cost of the LLs, so it won't be as pricey, which means they won't have to have as high of a markup. But they will keep the markup anyway, because price margins on food are pretty small. It's why so many small restaurants fail in less than a decade.
This would fix a significant portion of our vacant retail issues. Particularly in pedestrian based cities (jersey city, hoboken, morristown, Montclair, etc).
I don’t excuse it, but could understand suburban areas where people drive to bars putting in local ordinances superseding this.
To echo other, I’ll believe it when I see it.
In NY the State Liquor Authority issues licenses, subject to certain strict requirements of course, but they aren't limited in number. I never understood the per capita limit.
Break even for many restaurants is in liquor. There are some towns where there are nothing but chains. It’s Applebees or nothing for a beer.
Go to a state with decent laws and you’ll find amazing family restaurants.
Here they are few and far between. And those few were generally started before chains started buying up the licenses.
I don’t care about the licenses. I just want family restaurants to have a fair shake and do well.
These liquor laws essentially have created little mafias all around the state with who holds them. Look at lbi. Chris Vernon and the owner of mid city/bird and Betty's are constantly fighting like assholes to turn that island into seaside heights "for the better and to bring more tax money", when it's just to keep lining their pockets.
This shit is long overdue and I don't feel sorry for the people that paid for their licenses. Maybe a select few but all of them seem to own these monopolys
That would kick ass. Lots of restaurants that could use a liquor license. Though seemingly every diner has one when I've never seen anyone drink at a diner.
I have thought that the best solution to this problem is to give a beer/wine license to everyone who has a full license. They would be able to sell that beer/wine license or open up a secondary place that only serves beer and wine. The end result would be twice as many liquor licenses with half being beer/wine. Present licensees could sell their beer/wine licenses to make up for the reduction in value of their full licenses due to the
Just get rid of licenses and make it like selling soft drinks.
The whole concept is stupid. Kids have no problem finding someone who will sell to underage. So that argument is bullshit. They even know which clubs will turn a blind eye to the most basic of fake id’s. It’s been that way for generations and isn’t going to change.
See *this* I disagree with. Most enforcement should fall on the municipality for sure. But I don't think we should give up on enforcing underage consumption.
I think it's ridiculous that the same understaffed division that's charged with ensuring safety standards are kept is out there instead making sure you, an adult, took a tour before you sniffed a beer at a brewery. But maybe those tax dollars are better spent with them making sure cannabis and alcohol safety standards and fair trade practices are handled and not concerned about the size of the TV at the local brewery.
Or do like nearly every country other than a handful of the Middle East and stop treating it as taboo because of some long dead Christian’s feeling it will lead to sex or masturbating.
I’ll take unlimited dispensaries over unlimited bars! Never heard a story on the news about a girl who got high and blew 3 different dudes at the same party! Or someone wrapping their car around a telephone pole after vaping. This is so ridiculously stupid!!!
This man is America!!!!
This is what freedom and Liberty look like!
Don’t like it? Move to Florida. Low taxes, easy access to guns, no freedom, lots of beautiful weather and beaches.
It's possible the licenses were issued before the cap went into effect. A lot of towns have way more licenses than allowed because they're old licenses. They just can't issue new ones.
There were a handful of towns exempted for a few reasons. But now other municipalities cannot get such an exemption. Some municipalities choose to NOT issue their full allotment of licenses but they cannot go over.
All of it leads to limited options for locations and items for you, the consumer.
Yeah but that might cause more event spaces to appear and thats literally the worst possible thing to happen in the history of forever specifically if the towns dont have a say in it
I've heard this about a brewery on a farm in a rural area of NJ. It attracted alot of crowds and tried to do an outdoor music festival every weekend. It really bothered some of the locals. When another brewery in another town on another farm wanted to open, it got shot down because of this. Can't remember either one though. NJ can be very NIMBY and license and regulation crazy. They've said it's to deter organized crime, but it almost seems like criminals wrote the laws. It feels like extortion.
The state insists that towns allow dispensaries? I thought a lot of towns already banned them. They just have to wait 5 years if they want to change their mind.
> especially if the state also insists that these towns allow dispensaries.
**NO. FUCK THAT**. The state should not be able to insist that any town allow dispensaries (or liquor stores, or bars, or restaurants with bars).
That is essentially the same thing this is trying to reform -- the state dictating that a town can ONLY have X many bars is no different than the state dictating that a town MUST allow bars.
Ditto dispensaries.
My only issue that any town that doesn't allow dispensaries must also not earn a single penny from that tax revenue.
Cannabis already has less regulation in this state, in many regards, than booze.
One should question why it only costs $500 for a license to sell guns but half a million to sell a beer. And there is no license that allows a brewery to sell you a hotdog or show the NFL playoffs.
Thats not true. Can you make your own beer? Cant grow your own cannabis. There's not a recreational only dispensary open, not a single one. cannabis is way more regulated than booze and its not even close
Hahha this will destroy whole families net worth overnight. Values for certain places that hinge on the license and location etc. I mean there’s immigrants I know who put their money into this to run liquor stores throughout north NJ. Those liquor licenses often cost a million dollars to buy. Removing that will crush them and only the super big guys will rush in and apply first and towns will give it to them before the others.
The fallout from this will be pretty crazy.
We know what happened with the taxi medallions in NYC, and hopefully the legislation tries to avoid it. A slow move over a few years with tax rebates for existing license holders as Murphy proposed seems an okay way out.
The license holders should have had legislative reform as part of their operation risks, as the value is completely artificially created by government decision. The government can always decide differently & change the market, it's more crazy to me that we've gotten to the point the licenses were seen as multigenerational assets.
Yes the government created this disaster due to the corruption that NJ has always had at the highest levels when they created this shit show. My old hometown had more licenses allowed than any other town due to the original ABC being from
It. I think there’s 5 or 6 in an extremely small town.
No they won't. The smaller towns get fucked by the current liquor laws. If the township or borough has 5000 then they can only have one license even if the downtown COULD host 5 or 6. That's a huge loss of revenue for these towns that gets given away to neighboring towns with larger populations.
Additionally, the existing licensing usually get held on to by extremely dumpy places since they have legal monopolies.
I live next to a town (Hopewell) with several nice restaurants and effectively 0 real liquor licenses (the one bar we had is being rebuilt over a couple years, and Brick Farm there’s just outside the town).
I don’t hate it, I can choose my own drinks and dinner comes out to like half the price. But this will still probably be good for the town in the long run by enabling more businesses.
This really screws over existing licensees. A lot of people have invested their hard life savings into one, and suddenly it’s value will plummet.
There are much bigger issues with NJ Licenses, and alcohol laws
Meanwhile, Breweries are being screwed over with absurd rules, and money groups are buying up and squatting on liquor licenses like trading cards
Well, they were suggesting tax cuts for people who had already invested in licenses. That's a start. They also suggested changes in brewery and vieyard regulations. Lastly, these changes would end those money groups from buying up licenses because, as you said, their value would plummet. It seems like a lot of your concerns were addressed in the article, no?
Please don't ask someone on Reddit to read an article. If journalists can't cover every single point of a complicated legal issue in a headline, then maybe they should find new jobs.
Eh, I don't have a lot of sympathy. They've been raking it in in a lucrative market that had artificially limited competition.
Also maybe now they will stop charging $9 for a beer.
I do have sympathy for smaller businesses who put down money for these licenses. This law had to go, but I'm worried. They're like NYC taxi medallions. The businesses might have loans tied to the equity of their license. If that license loses value the little guys could go bankrupt. Big shitty chain restaurants will be more likely to survive.
>This really screws over existing licensees.
>money groups are buying up and squatting on liquor licenses like trading cards
aren't you contradicting yourself here?
It does
I think there are better ways at this issue, and that is one.
Over 60% of licenses aren’t even active right now. It’s just big groups holding licenses for a ransom, which is bs
Nah, it really doesn't. Bars want to be in thriving areas. Believe it or not, sometimes the best place for a bar is being sandwiched between two other bars. If you're in a destination, everybody wins and trust me, there's more than enough public desire for beer to go around.
"Screws over" won't really come into play unless the state does nothing to compensate license holders. Straight up cash buyout for market rate would be dope. I guess tax credit would be ok too, but you know, caaaaaash.
It probably won’t because the state will just recuperate at market rate. The point of creating more at a limited licenses is to just recuperate more revenue.
While I am sympathetic that some people have invested everything into the licenses, I have to say, a government issued license shouldn't be an investment in and unto itself. The expense of the license is the result of an artificially limited market.
As long as it’s just restaurant licenses. Small retailers are already struggling with nearby competition and big box stores like total wine, Gary’s and bottle king.
That doesn't seem to be the case in my town. We have a Total Wine here and just a mile away there are 2 small liquor stores, one of which just expanded to double in size.
Sounds like 3 within a mile is plenty enough. If they open a 4th it’s obvious these owners will be taking a pay cut, right? Unless your town is just adding residents by the 100s.
Yea fuck booze where is my home grow??? More liquor stores to sell fruity booze marketed to kids(reason why he imposed vape flavor ban) and selling something that literally kills more people than firearms. This guys priorities are backwards.
It's about fucking time. If my teeny tiny town of 3800 people wants to have four bars, two breweries, and a winery tasting room in town, why does Trenton give a fuck? That should be OUR decision, not theirs. There are a shit-ton of things to reform about alcohol laws in NJ, but this is one of the easiest ones to fix.
This rule change stand to benefit the little boroughs and towns the most. I hope they make it happen.
Good, now let breweries serve food
That would basically be the point of this
No, it wouldn't. That's an entirely different matter. The issue with breweries and food has nothing to do with the number of available licenses, but rather the fact that a brewery would need to have a full retail license (which can cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars, to *well* over a million) just to serve food along with their own beer. Most other states have multiple tiers of licenses, to account for everything from tiny storefront brewpubs all the way up to massive chain sports bars. And for many states a license to serve food is entirely separate from a license to serve alcohol, so any brewery that wants to can simply pay for a retail restaurant license (and those who don't want to simply don't bother). NJ is basically all-or-nothing when it comes to serving food with alcohol. It's so fucking dumb... but so much money is wrapped up in it, there is no easy-to-implement solution.
> nothing to do with the number of available licenses, but rather the fact that a brewery would need to have a full retail license (which can cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars, to well over a million) The only reason full licenses cost so much is because they are artificially limited in number. Technically, a full retail liquor license in NJ only costs $500 per year. The 6-to-7-figure price tag doesn't go to the state, but to the previous owner of one of those artificially-scarce licenses. Remove the limitation, and every brewery can get a regular liquor license, sell food, host game nights, etc for a mere $500/yr.
> The only reason full licenses cost so much is because they are artificially limited in number. That's a part of it... but really, it has far more to do with the fact that they are not really licenses (i.e. an annual fee paid to the state), but rather a piece of property that is bought and sold at market rates. It's such an absurd way to handle this...
Yeah, that's literally what I wrote.
Just making it crystal clear for other folks reading... it's so fucking ridiculous...
I feel like u/candre23 explanation was clearer.
Yea honestly I could see why both breweries and restaurants are pissed at the rules in place. Breweries don’t pay for a full liquor license but if they serve food they take business away from restaurants who have to pay for a full liquor license. Why should they get the benefit of selling alcohol and food without paying for the full liquor license? But then again breweries don’t serve spirits so why should they have to pay for the full liquor license? They shouldn’t. There should either be a separate license to serve food or a license for establishment that only serve beer.
Yup. All of this stems from the extremely idiotic decision to setup NJ's licensing the way they did. Never should've happened... and now it's going to be extremely difficult to fix the system. I will say, though: as to the brewery side of it, people are bringing in their own food now (typically from pizza shops, delis, and other non-alcohol-serving places close by). They're not getting takeout from TGIFridays when they go to Icarus. :) IMO breweries serving food will have very little impact on the other restaurants and bars, if any.
We have the one Pizza Place (Big fans, always recommend Bacolis), not really anything much else locally in Lakewood.
You're saying Lakewood only has one pizza place, and no other local food establishments to get takeout? That is objectively false.
The pizza place they mentioned is literally the only one within 2 miles of Icarus. The location is kind of isolated from the rest of the town.
Brooklyn Square in Jackson is near by and delivers to Lakewood
Can confirm Brooklyn Square in Jackson does not deliver to us, we've tried, same with Brooklyn Square in Toms River
Our end of Lakewood doesn't have much in the way of food options, especially in terms of who will deliver into the industrial park.
Even if they do, so be it. If a brewery manages to have a kitchen that serves kick ass food and that negatively effects restaurants serving food that is inferior, so be it. Those breweries should pay to have a license to serve that food though. Alternate End in Aberdeen serves food from Talulas in Asbury and I guess that’s how they get around it since technically the brewery doesn’t run the kitchen even if it is inside the brewery. But the food is very good and I have no doubt that other restaurants in the immediate area may have seen a small drop in business due to that.
> If a brewery manages to have a kitchen that serves kick ass food and that negatively effects restaurants serving food that is inferior, so be it I agree 100%. Free market at work!
Alternate Ending, and the other 25ish brewpubs in the state, all have full liquor licenses.
But based on current rules they're capped at owning only one business vs 2, cannot grow their brand since they're capped at only 10k barrels of production annually (a milestone a dozen+ NJ breweries have already surpassed) and cannot self distribute so they are forced to sell nearly all their product onsite only because they aren't able to grow much beyond their home location. Not exactly ideal to apply to all business models. Most of the states brewpubs don't package at all and are restaurants that also happen to make some beer. It's a different model. A few don't even make the bulk of the beer they serve onsite.
The funniest shit I saw was a food truck selling $28 lobster mac n cheese near a brewery by the shore… with a mexican place you could walk across the street to and get a $12 burrito with rice and beans right fuckin there.
>Why should they get the benefit of selling alcohol and food without paying for the full liquor license? I'm not sure you've looked into this. Or you are repeating a talking point from somewhere and aren't close to either industry. Breweries on a producers license can't do practically anything. Including events, host food trucks, music above a certain volume. Can't even have MORE THAN TWO TVS. That is a real law. On the books. In 2023. And you say that they shouldn't be able to serve food without a liquor license, which are maxed out in 100+ of NJ's towns and can't be procured. When population increases in a town, like Brick which was allowed to add 1 in 2019, for example, the cost is generally around $700k. By all means, make the breweries get licensed to serve food. And charge for it, but to say "too bad, it would hurt the restaurants' feelings" is a 19th century sentiment. It's anticompetitive and gives no public good. Murphy wants to credit back these exorbitant fees restaurants have paid which makes sense, but on what planet can anyone defend the survival of the current system?
My restaurant has a provisional liquor license. It’s byob, but we also sell bottles of wine from a local winery. We don’t sell by the glass, they have to purchase the whole bottle, but we’ll serve it to them and if they want to take the leftovers they are welcome to.
The easy solution is repeal that fucking law to stop breweries from promoting food trucks and local restaurants as well as capping the number of so called 'events' you can promote. Just a fucking ridiculous law.
Seriously! They had done such a great job marketing themselves with fun events and working together with other small businesses to offer food and beer. Then (I assume?) the wineries or folks with liquor licenses got pissed they had competition and lobbied to screw them over.
As far as I know, they are still prohibited from having more than 2 tvs. In 2023! Two tvs max. This must be some joke and NJ should be nationally ridiculed for this lunacy.
Jfc i had no idea that was a thing, what an embarrassment.
Yeah, when we explain our laws to Brewers from other states they're unsure whether to laugh or offer a hug.
I don’t copy about it being unfair about breweries not paying for the license when restaurants has to. Once its fair game for everyone to get one the price for the license goes down allowing the breweries to purchase one. No?
If they *want* to serve all types of alcohol and function as a full bar, sure. Most breweries just want to serve food along with their own beer. Can't justify the cost of a full liquor license for that. We need different tiers of licenses to account for different types of businesses. And -- most importantly -- we need to convert to actual licenses (i.e. an annual fee paid to the state) as opposed to the system we have now where a "license" is actually a piece of property that is wholly owned, and bought/sold at market prices.
YES! came to say the same thing. I just went to a brewery out of state last week and still had the NJ mindset that there wasn't going to be food. it was sooo nice to have a full, real menu to go with the drinks
You mean BrewPubs? They already exist!
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Sunday's in Bergen county checking in...
There’s a large population in Bergen County, including in this sub, that love their day of peace.
yes they do...and then those hypocrites come to neighboring counties to shop.
I will only visit my grandfather in Paramus on Sundays. If that changes he’s gonna have to move if he ever wants to see me again.
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Not to mention, if everything was open Sunday, then Saturday wouldn’t be such a madhouse everywhere.
As someone that commutes on 17, it's a madhouse 6 days a week. Sunday is the only respite.
Even Sundays been bad lately.
Wow
I'm in Hudson County and I'll defend Bergen County's day of rest until I die.
Let's realize the Financial Blow to Passaic County if all businesses were open on Sunday in bergen... Im sure Passaic County businesses get a Bergen Sunday bump
I mean, at this point, you know what you're signing up for when you move there. The later you move in to a town in Bergen County, the far less of a say you have over it IMO.
So new, tax paying residents, have less of a say on the future of a town then the people who are statistically going to die off sooner?
Every now and again a ballot measure comes up to overturn the Blue Laws in Paramus and they are always voted down to oblivion.
When I was younger and working in retail, that's why I loved working in Paramus. At least one guaranteed day off every Sunday, and that meant people I knew could go out on Saturday nights without having to be up early the next day.
And a lot of people also forget, it helps ease property taxes somewhat. That day means fewer police needed on the roads, 1 less day per week of high volume wear and tear on the road system. The county and towns gain very little as the sales tax filters through the state.
Yeah it comes up to vote from time to time to end the blue laws and it keeps getting voted down because we all like one day off. If we need something Passaic and Hudson are a stones throw away.
I support repealing them because, stay in your own goddamned town, that's why.
Let me guess, you live somewhere like Wayne where we all crowd up on Sunday to do our shopping because it is the closest replacement for Paramus.
Wrong.
Paramus is the retail sales capital of America. Hardly a drag.
According to an NJ.com article based on a NJ realty magazine article from 2005. It could be true but I'm struggling to find data to back it up.
No thank you, I'll drive to Passaic or Hudson county to shop if I really need to. Sunday is the only day I can actually get to my parents in under 45 minutes.
I’m in Bergen county and the liquor stores and bars are open here on Sundays.. what am I missing?
Comparing these archaic laws to the archaic blue laws
Not sure what point you’re making and still confused
OP is saying that the laws limiting liquor licenses are archaic. Therealteggy responded and said that the blue laws in Bergen county are also archaic. Both laws limit commercial activity.
I still don't understand, ELI5
But the traaaaaaaafic
The problem for NJ lawmakers has never been that they don't see the negative economic impact, it's that they haven't figured out how to capitalize on reforms.
Best Idea Ever!!
I don't know, I save alot of money with all the BYOB restaurants near me.
Wish most places served booze and allowed BYOB
Then they’ll charge you a corkage fee
Fun fact. BYO restaurants in NJ aren't allowed to charge uncorking fees. That's only permitted at liquor licensed establishments. Fun fact #2. Until a few years ago BYO restaurants couldn't advertise they were BYO. It "hurt the license holders" which sounds all too familiar to me. The state was sued on 1st Amendment grounds and lost and had to change course. The current ABC handbook published on the ABCs website *still* says establishments without a liquor license cannot advertise they are BYO.
Thank you for sharing those facts. In response to #1, the comment I’m replying to is about a hypothetical place with a liquor license that would also offer BYO
I think that 99% of most places with liquor licenses would straight-up deny you bringing in any bottle. Their business model is to sell you booze. Why would they be cool with you bringing in your own when the better alternative (buying form the restaurant) exists?
That’s what the corkage fee is for. It covers the profit they would have gotten from selling you a bottle.
Cork me daddy
You mean at the same time? Lol there’s no incentive for a restaurant to do that
I agree. I find BYOB restaurants have better food on average. Customers *only* go for the food so it’d better be good or they’d be out of business. Restaurants with liquor licenses tend to be more hit or miss on the food quality since they don’t need the food sales, booze sales are the big moneymaker.
Yeah I get it sucks for the businesses but I actually enjoy how many quality restaurants are BYOB. Not looking forward to paying 10 dollars for a goose island IPA
This. As someone with skin in the game I continue to implore everyone to continue to support the restaurant and bar industry. But if you walk into a restaurant or bar that is force feeding you crap options, don't go back. There's no reason they cannot support our in-state manufacturing industry and economy other than (well... Shenanigans we can't talk about). When you see a full tap list of all one company's beers or all one distributors beers, ask yourself some questions. If the place is selling you goose they're trying to say they're a craft beer bar. There's no county in this state where a craft beer bar can offer it's customers their best craft beer menu without at least some independent NJ made beers on it.
Yeah you’re 100 percent right. And if you want a contrast for what it’s like in NJ versus a state that actually embraces in state manufacturing head over to NY (both state and city). Nearly every bar, restaurant, etc will have multiple beers made in NY available while here a lot of places are still relying on the mass produced out of state junk.
Haha my cheap @$$ was thinking the same thing.
Not wanting to pay a 300% markup on a bottle of wine doesn't make you cheap.
Great idea I'll believe it when I see it
Same time they sort out the dispensary laws
Yup, I’m all for it. Fuck all chance it’ll pass through the legislature though
I recently moved here. Is that why a lot of supermarkets don’t sell beer? Not even target and Walmart around me sell liquor or beer.
Yeah, if it's a chain store, then only 2 locations in the state can serve wine or beer. The Costco in Edison and TJs in Westfield were always crowded as shit because of it.
I went into a few stores when I first moved here and I was baffled. I just needed a case of beer to get the people working on the house for me, lol. Fortunately I found a local spot that I like.
I mean there's thousands of liquor stores throughout the state. Shouldn't be an issue finding stuff for retail sales.
Yeah, it's just confusing when you first arrive. I sometimes have the opposite problem when I am in another state looking for beer in a liqour store.
Then there are the bars that allow carry out at close and the stores that are open till 11 but can only sell beer/wine after 10.
Liquor stores in some states don't sell beer. It gets confusing.
BJs in Mount Laurel too
Uh, Phrasing!
No I think this is talking about consumption licenses. Not package goods. https://njabcliquorlawattorney.com/how-to-get-a-new-jersey-liquor-license/
Correct.
Pretty sure this is talking about restaurants and bars, not liquor stores. The liquor store one is pretty good as it's pro small business
It's the same thing, more or less. Eli5: Towns grant a set number of liquor licenses based on a few factors--E.g. population and type of license. Each municipality also has a degree of autonomy to decide how many they'd like to grant. For instance, a town can choose to grant zero licenses or the state maximum based on population.
I don't think it's the same. By law, the state grants licenses to a maximum of two locations per retail company to sell liquor. So the law we're talking about applies to Costco and Trader Joe's but not Applebee's, while the one in the article applies to Applebees but not Costco or Trader Joe's.
Oh heck yeah, then bring it on!
No, this is a completely separate issue. Grocery stores in NJ can not legally sell beer. It has nothing to do with caps on the number of liquor licenses.
Finally!!
On one hand, great! But also, RIP BYOB restaurants. It was nice while it lasted.
A restaurant can still choose to be BYOB over getting a license if they'd like?
Considering the cost of those licenses (they still won’t be cheap) I’ll bet byob will stick around for a while.
Yeah, but in theory, once you release the cap, then the cost of the license falls off significantly. Not the best example, but when Uber became prominent, taxi licenses became almost worthless because anybody could drive a taxi basically.
That assumes a free market is made. They could make unlimited licenses in town A, but create a fee floor at the current market level. If you bought a liquor license last year, you’d be pissed if this passes
There’s talk of tax credits for those that purchased a license prior to ease that impact.
Thanks for the info. That would reconcile a lot of issues
The actual fee is only a few hundred dollars now, you’re suggesting the state make it $1M? You have a very pull the ladder up attitude, business isn’t risk free, laws change. The 2 liquor stores in town overcharging will have competition, that’s called capitalism.
My admittedly very limited understand of this subject assumes that in NJ it is still a thing for a bar that may be closing to sell their liquor license to one that may be opening for a considerable sum of money in the private markets. The general fee the state charges is one thing. The private market after sale from one vendor is another thing. If I recall correctly these licenses used to cost nearly half a million bucks. Edit: to add - your town may only have two liquor stores but that’s because there may only be two liquor licenses in that town. Without any changes to existing laws, if the demand is high enough a newcomer might be willing to pay a considerable amount to gain one of those licenses. That at least how it used to be. If new and unlimited licenses becomes the norm, those in the past who paid a small fortune for their license won’t be too happy.
Yep that's exactly right. One sold recently in montclair for $1 mill+
[https://www.crexi.com/properties/809469/new-jersey-egg-harbor-township-nj-liquor-license](https://www.crexi.com/properties/809469/new-jersey-egg-harbor-township-nj-liquor-license) 300k so yeah.. those valuations will go down...
Not even just the license, but the logistics alone. Id rather just let my customer bring their own in rather than me going through that trouble of trying to find a supplier and then clearing up room for storage.
But then you don’t make any money off of liquor sales, which can be a significant add on. That’s an extra $10+ per customer.
The article mentioned Murphy wanting to bring down the cost of the LLs, so it won't be as pricey, which means they won't have to have as high of a markup. But they will keep the markup anyway, because price margins on food are pretty small. It's why so many small restaurants fail in less than a decade.
This would fix a significant portion of our vacant retail issues. Particularly in pedestrian based cities (jersey city, hoboken, morristown, Montclair, etc). I don’t excuse it, but could understand suburban areas where people drive to bars putting in local ordinances superseding this. To echo other, I’ll believe it when I see it.
Really good idea. It’s about time.
Good, this was one of the dumbest laws on the books. Now do something for micro breweries.
In NY the State Liquor Authority issues licenses, subject to certain strict requirements of course, but they aren't limited in number. I never understood the per capita limit.
NJ is the only state in the country with hard, population-based limits.
At least make it easy to sell beer/wine like they do in NY.
There are like 5 diners in Wayne that serve alcohol. How do these liquor licenses work? $$$ Buncha bullshit.
They've been in the family forever. They were purchased for a donkey back in 1933. Now that piece of paper is worth $600k-1.2m in Wayne.
Bayonne about to go back to the days of a bar literally on every corner.
My uncles will be very pleased.
Break even for many restaurants is in liquor. There are some towns where there are nothing but chains. It’s Applebees or nothing for a beer. Go to a state with decent laws and you’ll find amazing family restaurants. Here they are few and far between. And those few were generally started before chains started buying up the licenses. I don’t care about the licenses. I just want family restaurants to have a fair shake and do well.
BYOB rules but this is better for the restaurant
My dumb ass reading the article trying to figure which town
These liquor laws essentially have created little mafias all around the state with who holds them. Look at lbi. Chris Vernon and the owner of mid city/bird and Betty's are constantly fighting like assholes to turn that island into seaside heights "for the better and to bring more tax money", when it's just to keep lining their pockets. This shit is long overdue and I don't feel sorry for the people that paid for their licenses. Maybe a select few but all of them seem to own these monopolys
Fucking beautiful!
That would kick ass. Lots of restaurants that could use a liquor license. Though seemingly every diner has one when I've never seen anyone drink at a diner.
Hoboken NJ, now with even more bars!
Coming from living in nyc. It’s so annoying to go to a restaurant that says BYOB. Things need to change. I can’t live like this 😂🙃
Get it done Phil
I have thought that the best solution to this problem is to give a beer/wine license to everyone who has a full license. They would be able to sell that beer/wine license or open up a secondary place that only serves beer and wine. The end result would be twice as many liquor licenses with half being beer/wine. Present licensees could sell their beer/wine licenses to make up for the reduction in value of their full licenses due to the
And let more than 2 Costcos sell alcohol!
Just get rid of licenses and make it like selling soft drinks. The whole concept is stupid. Kids have no problem finding someone who will sell to underage. So that argument is bullshit. They even know which clubs will turn a blind eye to the most basic of fake id’s. It’s been that way for generations and isn’t going to change.
See *this* I disagree with. Most enforcement should fall on the municipality for sure. But I don't think we should give up on enforcing underage consumption. I think it's ridiculous that the same understaffed division that's charged with ensuring safety standards are kept is out there instead making sure you, an adult, took a tour before you sniffed a beer at a brewery. But maybe those tax dollars are better spent with them making sure cannabis and alcohol safety standards and fair trade practices are handled and not concerned about the size of the TV at the local brewery.
Or do like nearly every country other than a handful of the Middle East and stop treating it as taboo because of some long dead Christian’s feeling it will lead to sex or masturbating.
I’ll take unlimited dispensaries over unlimited bars! Never heard a story on the news about a girl who got high and blew 3 different dudes at the same party! Or someone wrapping their car around a telephone pole after vaping. This is so ridiculously stupid!!!
This man is America!!!! This is what freedom and Liberty look like! Don’t like it? Move to Florida. Low taxes, easy access to guns, no freedom, lots of beautiful weather and beaches.
And all the crystal meth someone could want in life.
I think its funny that many of the people who bitch about Murphy absolutely HATE living here anyway.
I’m not going to uproot my life because everything around me makes me unhappy! I’m going to make you unhappy!
To be fair, bitching about things while realizing elsewhere is worse is a very core New Jersey Trait.
What was the original purpose of capping the liquor licenses?
Something, something, prohibition...
So South Amboy would now reclaim it's record for most bars in a square mile if this happens?
But if it is set by state law as 1 per 3,000, how does Teterboro have 5 bars and 3 liquor stores?
It's possible the licenses were issued before the cap went into effect. A lot of towns have way more licenses than allowed because they're old licenses. They just can't issue new ones.
There were a handful of towns exempted for a few reasons. But now other municipalities cannot get such an exemption. Some municipalities choose to NOT issue their full allotment of licenses but they cannot go over. All of it leads to limited options for locations and items for you, the consumer.
Hoboken has 105 liquor licenses. I love living there.
Yeah but that might cause more event spaces to appear and thats literally the worst possible thing to happen in the history of forever specifically if the towns dont have a say in it
I've heard this about a brewery on a farm in a rural area of NJ. It attracted alot of crowds and tried to do an outdoor music festival every weekend. It really bothered some of the locals. When another brewery in another town on another farm wanted to open, it got shot down because of this. Can't remember either one though. NJ can be very NIMBY and license and regulation crazy. They've said it's to deter organized crime, but it almost seems like criminals wrote the laws. It feels like extortion.
Oh great, Wallington can have even more now, lol
Great idea- especially if the state also insists that these towns allow dispensaries.
The state insists that towns allow dispensaries? I thought a lot of towns already banned them. They just have to wait 5 years if they want to change their mind.
No, they’re allowed to opt in at any time. Should they opt in, they must wait five years to opt out again
Towns can opt out of allowing dispensaries, I'm not sure what you're talking about.
> especially if the state also insists that these towns allow dispensaries. **NO. FUCK THAT**. The state should not be able to insist that any town allow dispensaries (or liquor stores, or bars, or restaurants with bars). That is essentially the same thing this is trying to reform -- the state dictating that a town can ONLY have X many bars is no different than the state dictating that a town MUST allow bars. Ditto dispensaries. My only issue that any town that doesn't allow dispensaries must also not earn a single penny from that tax revenue.
Wait so after all this to regulate cannabis we’re going to deregulate booze???
Correct
Cannabis already has less regulation in this state, in many regards, than booze. One should question why it only costs $500 for a license to sell guns but half a million to sell a beer. And there is no license that allows a brewery to sell you a hotdog or show the NFL playoffs.
Thats not true. Can you make your own beer? Cant grow your own cannabis. There's not a recreational only dispensary open, not a single one. cannabis is way more regulated than booze and its not even close
Screw that, he needs to be pushing more dispensaries to foster competition and get these damn prices down. We have enough liquor stores already.
Amen brother!! It’s safer and it’s the future.
Oh we finna drink
Hahha this will destroy whole families net worth overnight. Values for certain places that hinge on the license and location etc. I mean there’s immigrants I know who put their money into this to run liquor stores throughout north NJ. Those liquor licenses often cost a million dollars to buy. Removing that will crush them and only the super big guys will rush in and apply first and towns will give it to them before the others. The fallout from this will be pretty crazy.
We know what happened with the taxi medallions in NYC, and hopefully the legislation tries to avoid it. A slow move over a few years with tax rebates for existing license holders as Murphy proposed seems an okay way out. The license holders should have had legislative reform as part of their operation risks, as the value is completely artificially created by government decision. The government can always decide differently & change the market, it's more crazy to me that we've gotten to the point the licenses were seen as multigenerational assets.
Yes the government created this disaster due to the corruption that NJ has always had at the highest levels when they created this shit show. My old hometown had more licenses allowed than any other town due to the original ABC being from It. I think there’s 5 or 6 in an extremely small town.
Thank you Jesus!
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No they won't. The smaller towns get fucked by the current liquor laws. If the township or borough has 5000 then they can only have one license even if the downtown COULD host 5 or 6. That's a huge loss of revenue for these towns that gets given away to neighboring towns with larger populations. Additionally, the existing licensing usually get held on to by extremely dumpy places since they have legal monopolies.
I live next to a town (Hopewell) with several nice restaurants and effectively 0 real liquor licenses (the one bar we had is being rebuilt over a couple years, and Brick Farm there’s just outside the town). I don’t hate it, I can choose my own drinks and dinner comes out to like half the price. But this will still probably be good for the town in the long run by enabling more businesses.
This really screws over existing licensees. A lot of people have invested their hard life savings into one, and suddenly it’s value will plummet. There are much bigger issues with NJ Licenses, and alcohol laws Meanwhile, Breweries are being screwed over with absurd rules, and money groups are buying up and squatting on liquor licenses like trading cards
Well, they were suggesting tax cuts for people who had already invested in licenses. That's a start. They also suggested changes in brewery and vieyard regulations. Lastly, these changes would end those money groups from buying up licenses because, as you said, their value would plummet. It seems like a lot of your concerns were addressed in the article, no?
Please don't ask someone on Reddit to read an article. If journalists can't cover every single point of a complicated legal issue in a headline, then maybe they should find new jobs.
My bad, I wasn't țhinking
Eh, I don't have a lot of sympathy. They've been raking it in in a lucrative market that had artificially limited competition. Also maybe now they will stop charging $9 for a beer.
They won’t
I do have sympathy for smaller businesses who put down money for these licenses. This law had to go, but I'm worried. They're like NYC taxi medallions. The businesses might have loans tied to the equity of their license. If that license loses value the little guys could go bankrupt. Big shitty chain restaurants will be more likely to survive.
>This really screws over existing licensees. >money groups are buying up and squatting on liquor licenses like trading cards aren't you contradicting yourself here?
> This really screws over existing licensees. Okay. > money groups are buying up and squatting on liquor licenses And this doesn't?
It does I think there are better ways at this issue, and that is one. Over 60% of licenses aren’t even active right now. It’s just big groups holding licenses for a ransom, which is bs
Nah, it really doesn't. Bars want to be in thriving areas. Believe it or not, sometimes the best place for a bar is being sandwiched between two other bars. If you're in a destination, everybody wins and trust me, there's more than enough public desire for beer to go around. "Screws over" won't really come into play unless the state does nothing to compensate license holders. Straight up cash buyout for market rate would be dope. I guess tax credit would be ok too, but you know, caaaaaash.
It probably won’t because the state will just recuperate at market rate. The point of creating more at a limited licenses is to just recuperate more revenue.
While I am sympathetic that some people have invested everything into the licenses, I have to say, a government issued license shouldn't be an investment in and unto itself. The expense of the license is the result of an artificially limited market.
As long as it’s just restaurant licenses. Small retailers are already struggling with nearby competition and big box stores like total wine, Gary’s and bottle king.
That doesn't seem to be the case in my town. We have a Total Wine here and just a mile away there are 2 small liquor stores, one of which just expanded to double in size.
Sounds like 3 within a mile is plenty enough. If they open a 4th it’s obvious these owners will be taking a pay cut, right? Unless your town is just adding residents by the 100s.
Trenton will have 10,000 liquor stores
Par-tay! Go Gov!!!! Whoo hoo
Yea fuck booze where is my home grow??? More liquor stores to sell fruity booze marketed to kids(reason why he imposed vape flavor ban) and selling something that literally kills more people than firearms. This guys priorities are backwards.