Restaurants want to serve takeout beer, wine and cocktails to their customers again, but liquor stores hope last year remains last call for drinks to-go.
The proposal to allow restaurants to offer alcohol-to-go has a strong advocate in Gov. Kathy Hochul, who toasted the practice in her State of the State address and included it in her proposed 2022-23 budget.
But alcohol-to-go is gone from the Assembly and State Senate's own spending bills. This leaves the policy part of intense negotiations and furious lobbying as the state budget deadline looms Friday – with the possibility that budget negotiations push into the weekend.
For craft brewers, the changes in a law passed late last year mean a much faster review process to obtain the liquor license needed to open, reducing what can be a six-month waiting period to a matter of as little as three to four weeks.
To restaurants, including those in Western New York, takeout or delivery alcohol is convenient for customers and a financial boon to restaurateurs continuing to recover from the pandemic.
"As of right now, I think the majority of us are going to continue to pray for it and push forward with it and advocate for it," said Jimmy Butera, owner of Butera’s Craft Beer & Pizza in Hamburg and president of the local chapter of the New York State Restaurant Association. "I urge all of our lawmakers here locally to give us something because the last 24 months has been devastating for so many."
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But to liquor stores, an influential group in Albany, alcohol-to-go siphons sales away from an industry primarily populated by small-business owners operating on a slim profit margin.
"The proposed legislation would take what remains of these small businesses, their regular customers, and hand them over to another industry that is not being compelled to follow the same burdensome regulations for nothing in return," the Metropolitan Package Store Association said in a statement earlier this year.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo temporarily introduced alcohol-to-go in March 2020 while New York was under a formal Covid-19 emergency.
It was an attempt to boost the restaurant and tavern industry at a time when indoor seating was banned.
The policy remained in place even as patrons were allowed back into restaurants and bars on a limited basis.
"Something like this can make the difference of a business – that most people like going to – staying open or closing," said Butera.
Scott Wexler, executive director of the Empire State Restaurant & Tavern Association, said restaurants make their largest profits on the sale of beer, wine and booze. Today, with so many patrons shifting to takeout and delivery service, restaurateurs lose what they'd earn selling alcohol with that meal, Wexler said.
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"As an ability to generate revenue, drinks-to-go was huge," he said, pointing to data showing that about 40% of takeout orders placed while the policy was in effect included alcohol.
Liquor store owners accepted alcohol-to-go on a temporary basis at a time of pandemic-related restrictions.
"I did support it when the restaurants were shut down," said Lesle Heubach, owner of Gates Circle Wine & Liquor in Buffalo.
Liquor stores never closed because the state considered them essential businesses. Wexler said data indicate liquor store sales boomed during the pandemic, even with alcohol-to-go, citing increases of 15% to 20% statewide between 2019 and 2021.
Takeout alcohol sales replaced spending on alcohol inside taverns, not purchases at a liquor store, Wexler said.
"The restaurant needs that option, and it's not hurting anybody," he said.
The state emergency designation ended last June. The State Legislature needed to approve an extension of the alcohol-to-go policy but let it lapse instead.
This followed pushback from liquor store owners, a powerful force in the state capital known for generous campaign contributions and close ties to lawmakers.
As one sign of the industry's influence, New York continues to bar wine and liquor sales in grocery stores.
Liquor store trade groups cite their own data showing a drop in sales since 2020.
"In sharp contrast to the assumptions of some persons, the pandemic has been responsible for major losses in many of our businesses with a typical neighborhood wine and liquor store seeing foot traffic down 35-50 percent and double-digit sales losses for a sizeable number of our stores," the package store association said in February.
They have also blasted to-go drinks as a public-safety issue, citing the potential for further drunken driving, public inebriation and underage drinking.
Heubach, however, said she doesn't believe to-go sales at bars and restaurants affected her business, mainly because those establishments charge far more for a bottle of wine or a single-serving drink than her store does.
"I personally don't really mind either way," said Heubach, a board member of the New York State Liquor Store Association, which represents upstate stores and has come out in strong opposition to the proposal.
While the Legislature punted last year, Hochul, who took office in August, has made permanently legalizing alcohol-to-go a priority.
She vowed to bring the policy back on a permanent basis and included it in her proposed state budget. At a Brooklyn wine bar earlier this month, Hochul said, “This is what kept people afloat during those dark, dark months and years of the pandemic.”
Members of the Assembly and Senate, however, did not include alcohol-to-go in their own budget bills, arguing they did not want to include policy provisions in the spending bills.
The following guidelines are valid through at least April 15, when the SLA will revisit the situation in light of the COVID-19
"Whenever you're dealing with lawmakers and budgets and stuff, it can turn around at the 11th hour and pass," Butera said.
Can the various parties negotiate an agreement that revives alcohol-to-go in New York in some form by Friday's budget deadline?
"There's always at least two competing interests," Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes, D-Buffalo, said of Albany legislative debates, "and sometimes three."
Peoples-Stokes said she supports bringing back alcohol to go and eyes one possible compromise letting individual counties decide for themselves.
State Sen. Tim Kennedy, D-Buffalo, said he would support a change to allow restaurants and bars to purchase alcohol directly from a local liquor store, a boost for the stores and a convenience for bars and restaurants.
"So there's ways to both pass the alcohol-to-go legislation as well as make changes to the alcohol and beverage control laws that, as far as I'm concerned, in many ways are antiquated and need to be changed to help the liquor stores," Kennedy said.
