A bill now before the D.C. Council would turn the District’s liquor laws upside down: Want a beer with lunch? Drink it at the supermarket. Need a six-pack for the game? Pick it up at the neighborhood bar.
Legislation introduced Tuesday by at-large Councilman Kwame Brown would allow grocery stores to sell beer and wine for in-store as well as off-site consumption. And vice versa — bars and restaurants could sell wine and beer for their patrons to take home.
“Although we have seen our share of high-end retailers in the District of Columbia, their growth has been somewhat limited by license laws which prevent wine stores, grocery stores and other wine outlets from allowing alcohol consumption on premises,” Brown said. “This bill would correct that situation.”
The measure’s intent, according to its authors, is to allow stores such as Whole Foods to host wine tastings or sell beer and wine in a café-like setting. The bill will “ease anachronistic restrictions that don’t seem to serve any policy purpose at this point,” said Andrew Kline, general counsel for the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington.
“There’s this great Whole Foods in Fair Lakes, where you can go in and sit at the counter and order a crab cake platter and a glass of wine,” Kline said, noting surrounding jurisdictions already offer an on-and-off premises liquor license. “This would allow that to occur in the District.”
But the bill, backed by at least eight council members, doesn’t spell out the specifics or the intent, said Bryan Weaver, an Adams Morgan advisory neighborhood commissioner. It is written so broadly, he said, that the owner of any grocery store, convenience store or bodega could apply for an on-premises license and transform into a tavern.
“There’s going to be someone who has a [retailer’s license] who isn’t making it and is going to open up a de facto bar,” Weaver said.
There will always be a “handful of bad operators” who break the rules, Kline responded, “but that’s not the intent.”
Charles Reed, a Logan Circle advisory neighborhood commissioner, said he would have no problem if the P Street Whole Foods wanted to sell its lunchtime diners a beer. But Reed’s immediate impression of Brown’s bill, he said, is that it “converts grocery stores into taverns.”
“And that,” he said, “is the fear.”
