Lutter
Well-Known Member
It's complicated.It's illegal for breweries to sell retail to-go? I've bought 6 packs from a brewery in Waco while I was there, and I've seen multiple breweries in Ft Worth have bottles and cans in their fridges that I'm guessing was for sale.
You can sell beer-to-go as a "brewpub" license. This is limited to 10,000 bbl per location. You can fill growlers, sell other peoples' beer (by adding a retailer permit), sell crowlers... pretty much do whatever you want. You can't self-distribute the beer and need to go through a distributor to sell beer off-property. Brewpubs don't necessarily sell food either as it's not required.
You can't sell beer-to-go at a "manufacturing" brewery. You can make as much beer to your heart's content under this license (heck, we have a Bud AND a MillerCoors factory here in this state) HOWEVER you cannot sell ANY beer to go. You can not sell beer on premises either if your brewery makes more than 225,000 bbls of beer unless you are grandfathered in as well (open pre-2017). Big thing for these folks is that they're also allowed to self-distribute up to 40,000 bbls and don't necessarily need a distributor and can skip those costs (Austin Beerworks and Live Oak Brewing, for instance, self-distribute all their beer themselves). Manufacturing breweries can also have restaurants on-site (Saint Arnold has a gigantic restaurant for instance)
To show exactly how corrupted lawmakers in this state have been in this state in the past by distributor lobbyists regarding beer... here is my favorite beer law ever be passed in Texas:
"[in 1990] A bill was passed allowing the sale of alcohol in a marine park, even in the case where the business was owned by the holder of a manufacturer's license or brewer's permit. Conditions of the rule stated that the marine park must have a restricted access area between 245 and 255 acres in a county with a population greater than 950,000." http://www.beerinbigd.com/p/timeline-of-beer-legislation-in-texas.html
... exactly the size of SeaWorld San Antonio, owned by AB at the time, lol. Since taken off the books (on-premises sales at manufacturing licensed breweries like Bud was allowed in 2013 and made it moot).
The kicker Josh is that all wineries AND distilleries offer sales to go here. It's sorta ******* ridiculous.
One of the biggest distributor lobbying groups this session (Wholesale Distributors of Texas) is using a main debate in their literature that most craft breweries don't make more than 10,000 bbl and they should just be brewpubs, sell on-site, not make any more beer, sell to them (as they must) to expand beyond their 4 walls, and basically STFU about it.
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