Chad Emerson is President and CEO of Downtown Huntsville Inc.

What if I told you that the State of Alabama could take a simple and straightforward action that would help save an entire segment of Alabama’s local small business community while also promoting Alabamians to stay-at-home instead of going out?

The reality is that this win-win action is very possible and can be done without a lengthy, red-tape process. Under the State’s emergency powers, Governor Ivey could permit our state’s small-business micro-breweries to deliver sealed and packaged product to a customer’s home curbside. This emergency regulation could be enacted within 24 hours and could very well help save much of our state’s craft beverage industry.

Downtown Huntsville, Inc. organized the Downtown Huntsville Craft Beer Trail several years ago in order to market our 10 Downtown area breweries in a collaborative way. Each of these craft beverage makers represents small-business entrepreneurs that generate income for our city, jobs for our citizens, and creativity for our community. All in all, craft beverage makers employ over 500 people across the state with many exporting their products to surrounding states. Simply put, craft beverage makers are revenue-generators and job-creators for our State.

Unfortunately, because of the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting social distancing regulations, many within this industry are perilously close to failure. The main reason is that much of their business model is based on guests visiting their establishment to enjoy food and beverages while dining-in and also taking home sealed and packaged locally brewed beverages. To be clear: we strongly support the emergency restrictions on in-restaurant consumption but also recognize that it has crushed this industry’s business model and caused the loss of jobs and revenue with very little advanced notice to prepare.

We are very grateful that the Alabama ABC Board enacted emergency regulations that allow our State’s craft breweries to complete touch-less transactions on-line and bring the purchased and sealed product to the customer’s car at the establishment’s curbside. This was a thoughtful and helpful decision by our ABC leadership and has certainly been beneficial to the craft beverage industry’s ability to weather this crisis.

However, this was enacted before the expanded stay-at-home regulations were enacted. Those regulations (which we also strongly support) have further diminished this industry’s ability to serve its customers and employ its workers. Guests can still drive to the breweries and purchase to-go or curbside under the permissible stay-at-home activities, but this requirement induces individuals to leave their homes.

That’s because, unlike most other products that you can buy and have delivered to your home (and help promote social distancing), the products that our Alabama small business, microbreweries make cannot be delivered under state regulations. We propose a simple and straightforward solution that would help them stay in business and help their customers stay at home:

The State should allow Alabama craft beverage makers to deliver their sealed and packaged product curbside to their customer’s homes.

To be clear, this is not an unprecedented proposal. Even prior to the pandemic, a variety of states allowed home delivery for local craft beverages. Since the pandemic began, other states in the Southeast have passed emergency regulations that allow home delivery in an effort to help keep these businesses afloat, their workers employed, and their customers socially distanced at home. These include peer Southeastern states like Tennessee and Virginia who have enacted emergency regulations that allow home delivery of sealed and packaged product.

Our Governor’s emergency powers provide her the authority to adopt this simple and straight forward solution , especially during the time of a stay-at-home and other social-distancing restrictions. Regardless of whether you are craft beverage consumer or not, we should all recognize that now is that time to support our fellow Alabama small business entrepreneurs and their hard-working employees with straightforward emergency regulations when we have the opportunity to do so. Indeed, if this emergency regulation is issued, these small businesses will be able to rehire some of their unemployed workers to help with this while we all wait for this crisis to eventually pass. Simply put, this can both save Alabama jobs and restore some that have been lost.

Even a small step like allowing craft beverage home delivery of sealed and packaged products would be a strong pro-small business and pro-Alabama worker decision by our State leaders. Your leadership on this will save jobs and may prevent these valued small businesses from failing.