Drive-through beer pick-ups? Craft cocktails delivered to your door?

The state’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) is temporarily relaxing several regulations in order to provide some relief for restaurants, bars and liquor stores that have been hard hit by shelter-in-place orders that have either severely restricted their businesses or forced them to close. The new rules make it easier for businesses to sell alcohol to customers while the orders are in effect.

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By Friday morning, Christ Aivaliotis, owner of the Kon-Tiki bar in Oakland, was already working on creating mai tais and zombies for delivery. Earlier in the week, after the shelter-in-place order had forced him and other bars — deemed “nonessential businesses” under the order — to close, he’d had to lay off most of his staff. He was generating a little bit of revenue by filling take-out and delivery food orders, but he was starting to get worried about how his business would fare in the days ahead.

The announcement that he could now offer some of his tiki drinks to customers came as a huge relief. “We bought a bottling system,” Aivaliotis said, “similar to what you’d use to bottle beer.” He re-hired some of the laid-off employees as delivery drivers. He began delivering the bottled drinks to customers in Oakland at 5 p.m. on Friday— as long as they also ordered some food, a condition of the ABC’s relaxed regulation. The fruity rum drinks, intended for two or more people to share, cost $18-$28.

In less than two hours on Friday, they sold out of all 96 bottles they’d made.

Other businesses, including Lower Haight cocktail bar Maven and Mission Bay distillery Seven Stills, were also getting ready to take advantage of the new rules by Friday evening.

“This regulatory relief is designed to support the alcoholic beverage industry in its efforts to assist California in slowing the spread of the virus while assisting the industry in dealing with the economic challenges it is facing as a result,” the ABC said in a statement.

Here’s what’s changing.

• All on-sale retailers - a.k.a. bars and restaurants - may now sell pre-packaged alcohol to go. (Some, but not all, restaurants’ licenses already allowed this.)

• Cocktails may now be sold to go as long as they’re with take-out or delivery food orders. They must have a lid or cap, and, the ABC clarifies, “no lids with sipping holes or openings for straws.” If a delivery driver is transporting those, they have to be in the car’s trunk.

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• If a retailer has a license that previously prohibited it from selling alcohol through a drive-through window, that prohibition is now suspended.

• Craft distillers are also now allowed to do home delivery - but must keep it to 2.25 liters per customer per day. And retailers can now accept payment for alcohol delivery at your doorstep, rather than processing the payment on their business’ premises.

• Retailers may now return unsold alcohol to wholesalers or distributors. That means that any retailers who are now finding themselves without a steady cash flow can get rid of some inventory.

• Retailers may now buy alcohol from other retailers - and even from restaurants. (Normally, they’re required to buy alcohol from a wholesaler.)

• Normally, alcohol wholesalers can’t extend credit for retailer customers beyond 30 days, but for now the ABC says it won’t be enforcing that.

• All retailers can be open for all hours of the day except for between 2:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.

Those are a lot of changes. The ABC always has to weigh the benefits to individual businesses against public concerns. In this case, the ABC said in its statement, “the Department has concluded that none of these measures, exercised on a temporary basis, will jeopardize the public’s health, safety or welfare.”

For Aivaliotis of the Kon-Tiki, providing cocktails to people in their homes also seemed like a public service — providing some levity during a pandemic. “People need some sort of distraction,” he said. “They need something fun. I just want people to be able to get drunk in their homes!”

Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicle’s wine critic. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley Instagram: @esthermob