Over the past year, I have visited numerous limited breweries, met with and spoken to various stakeholders, including the different tiers in the alcohol industry, and have analyzed the issues facing the growing craft beer industry. As a result of these visits, meetings with stakeholders, and discussions with the owners of the breweries, it has become apparent that there is significant confusion in the industry regarding what constitutes an appropriate tour and what constitutes permissible activities that may take place on a licensed premises, particularly in the tasting rooms of the limited breweries. Although it is clear that a tasting room at a limited brewery is not a new consumption venue with the same privileges as a Class C plenary retail consumption licensee, it is also evident that the brewery has limited retail privileges granted by the Legislature

I want to know where was this “evident”? Let’s break it down.

Clearly, the 2012 Amendment has been met with several different interpretations. The most maddening thing about the 2012 Amendment is that it really doesn’t tell you much more than this:

to brew any malt beverage, not in excess of 300,000 barrels (31-gallon barrels) per year

to sell to wholesalers and at festivals in the state

to sell and distribute out of state

as part of a tour, sell beer for on-site consumption

to offer samples to visitors

to sell up to 15.5 gallons of beer (i.e. a keg) for consumption off-premises

sale of food is absolutely prohibited

to maintain a warehouse

Initially the rules were followed without any interperetation. You opened, you did tours, you sold beer. As the number of breweries continued to grow and the popularity started to skyrocket, you started to see breweries holding events to bring people in to their establishment. Music, TV, Quizzo, Yoga, Craft Classes, Painting Parties, etc started to pop up all over New Jersey Breweries. These events were held in addition to following all of the above rules, and grew immensely popular. Something else was happening, breweries started to become vital to the community. Want to know what is going on in your town? Visit the local brewery. Want to know the skinny on the best restaurants? Visit you local brewery. Breweries were hot. Towns were changing their laws to allow breweries to be built within city limits (Pitman and Haddonfield, both traditionally dry towns, both changed laws to do this) and they were prospering, changing downtowns and being key businesses in raising money for local charities, letting their space be used for events, and earning the town revenue. People were starting to take notice.

Fast forward to 2016. There are now around 70 Breweries in the state and they are making inroads on taps in bars, shelf space in liquor stores, and have spawned other businesses and blogs (like this one). Craft beer was growing in leaps and bounds and we started to see some push back from bars and restaurants who felt that breweries were overstepping their bounds. Mostly they were isolated incidents and the majority of the bar and restaurant owners embraced craft beer and had many of them on tap in their establishments. As the breweries continued to grow, we started to hear more complaints from liquor liscense holders that were upset with the breweries that were, in the words of one owner I spoke to, “acting like sports bars”. I had a pretty heated conversation with him, explaining that his license was worth something, that he could sell anything he wanted, and that he was himself selling craft beer at his bar. When I mentioned that breweries had to make everything that they sold he still wouldn’t budge. This is the moment that I saw all the rainbows and sunshine on craft breweries was starting to wane in the eyes of distributors, liquor license holders, and big beer. Oh yeah, big beer started to lose market share, don’t think for one second that their lobbyists are not involved in the new rules. So here we are in 2018 with almost 100 breweries and nearly 20 more in development and the hammer has come down.

So here are the changes:

In the case of on-site activities, such as trivia night, paint and sip, live music, live sporting events and yoga night, etc., a Limited Brewery licensee will be permitted to hold a total of twenty-five (25) events per license term on the licensed premises of a Limited Brewery..The e-notification shall be provided to the Division by the Limited brewery at least ten (10) days before the special event is scheduled to occur