For those of you who live in Texas, you are probably aware that the Legislature, which only meets in odd years, is considering a new law that would codify the Governor’s covid order letting restaurants to permit takeout alcohol. So, while they are at it, I have contacted my state rep and senator and asked them to look at allowing BYOB for restaurants that have full liquor licenses. Right now only restaurants that have beer/wine licenses are permitted to have BYOB. Here is the text of my letters:
"I understand that the legislature is considering making the ability to have alcohol delivered from restaurants (which has been permitted during the current pandemic) allowed by statute in this legislative session. As a part of this consideration, I would ask that you review the possibility of allowing Texas citizens to bring their own wine into restaurants (“BYOB”) with full liquor licenses, which is now prohibited by Texas law. Texas is one of the few states that does NOT permit it, and frankly, it does not make sense, not to allow it. This would actually be the best interests of restaurants, since they would be able to reduce the amount of money needed to invest in inventory, and instead could charge corkage fees that would increase revenues without the inventory expense."
I would encourage all of you Texans to contact your legislators and ask them to consider a change in the law for us wine drinkers.
Shipping made a big splash in the last session and actually made it out of committee (a big first step) but failed to reach the next step. Tom Wark (free the grapes), Zacharria (the Zachy’s family) worked it hard, as did many others including me-a great tip if you really want to make your voice heard is when you call your rep ask to speak to ‘the legislative aid’ they are the ones that know what’s going on and when you ask they tend to put you thru thinking you’re not just a constituent cold calling. One told me that when the shipping bill was in committee the liquor lobbyists were promising campaign money to lawmakers but once it made it OUT of committee they shifted to promising money…to fund primary challengers to anyone who would vote to ‘let minors order tequila over the Internet’. Somewhere in wine talk is a long thread about this from back when this was happening.
A number of years ago, the Lt Governor, David Dewhurst had the skids greased to allow BYOB in restaurants with full liquor licenses. He was frustrated he could not get his favorite wine (Rombauer Chard) off the restaurant lists. It was scheduled to be voted out of committee. The evening before the committee vote, the Chairman of the Committee had a massive heart attack in an elevator in the State House. Fortunately, he survived, but the vote did not, and was never taken. You cannot make this stuff up.
There was significant opposition to Dewhurst’s bill 12 years ago from the TX restaurant industry, claiming allowing BYOB would take away a restaurant’s profits from alcohol sales, reduce income for servers through lower tips, increase liability risks, and open a can of worms as to what exactly could be brought in - beer, wine, spirits ? This was in addition to the expected opposition from the neo-prohibitionists. Given the hardships the restaurant industry has faced the past 11 months, I’d expect these screams of agony to be even louder now.
Agree, there was opposition. I was told by the distributors, among others. Not sure why the distributors would care. Someone is still buying the stuff. However, i think that a lot of the restaurants right now would be better served by not having to have tens of thousands of dollars tied up in wine inventory. Might be more profitable to charge $20/btl for corkage with less inventory expense.