A recent legal change in Illinois provides a potential model to follow. Bars and restaurants in the state formed an advocacy group, Cocktails for Hope, that successfully pushed for restaurants and bars to legally sell premixed cocktails to-go.
Sean O’Leary, president of O’Leary Law and Policy Group, and a legal advisor to Cocktails for Hope, said the organization wasn’t gaining any traction with the governor or the Illinois Liquor Control Commission. So it went the legislative route.
The public face of the initiative was Julia Momose, partner and creative director at Chicago cocktail bar Kumiko. Prior to Cocktails for Hope, Momose had no political experience. But O’Leary says she rose to the challenge, talking with legislators and advocating for her industry. He credits “grassroots support”—including a petition signed by more than 12,000 people—for the initiative’s success.
Breweries who want to see similar changes should do the same, he says, and take matters into their own hands. Momose made the case to state government that selling cocktails to-go would keep business afloat; breweries need to be equally clear about their own dire stakes.
“Breweries need to get personal with their representative or senator, because the distributors are definitely doing that,” he says. “Some of these businesses say they don’t have time to do that, but that’s when you lose your rights.”
He says brewers’ guilds can’t be expected to do all the work; many of them are busy fighting for their own financial survival. He notes that the Illinois Restaurant Association was in support of the cocktails to-go legislation, but was also busy with a Payroll Protection Program (PPP) bill and other member priorities during the pandemic.
He’s not hopeful about Illinois breweries’ chances of securing permanent rights to deliver and ship beer to drinkers in-state—“With the strength of beer distributors in Illinois? Probably not”—but says there’s always a chance, if they’re loud enough.
“We started an organization in six weeks and made a radical change to Illinois law,” he says. “Craft brewers need to make the case that if they don’t have delivery, they won’t be in business.”
Given the precarious financial situation many of that state’s small breweries currently find themselves in, his advice shouldn’t be hard to heed.
