By Todd A. Price, USA Today/The American South
NEW ORLEANS — Restaurants suffered more than most businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dining rooms were closed or severely limited when the virus began spreading in March 2020. Restaurants that remained open relied on to-go orders. Many states, however, offered some relief by allowing to-go sales of beer, wine and cocktails.
“It was absolutely a lifesaver for us,” said Garrett Carr, the bar manager at the upscale bistro Cafe Roze in Nashville, Tennessee.
As states lift restrictions and return to normal, lawmakers across the country have decided that to-go drinks should remain on the menu. Even some traditionally conservative states in the South will now let people take their booze back home.
“It definitely helped remove some of the stigma around drinking,” said Carr about the temporary relaxation of alcohol rules during the pandemic.
Today, according to the National Restaurant Association, 39 states, including Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia permit to-go cocktails. Some states made the change temporary, like Tennessee where the new law that allows carryout and delivery of alcohol expires in 2023.
While some Southern cities have long allowed open containers in designated zones and Louisiana has famously allowed drive through frozen drink stands, prior to the pandemic to-go cocktails were not legal statewide anywhere in the country, according to the National Restaurant Association.
In states that permitted to-go drinks during the pandemic, 89% of restaurants that served alcohol took advantage of the temporary change, according to the National Restaurant Association.
Even in Alabama, where pandemic to-go alcohol sales ended in January 2021 and restrictions made cocktails complicated, restaurants and bars kept more staff employed during the pandemic because of carryout booze. The state required that liquor be sold in a factory sealed container. Instead of cocktails, customers could only buy a “cocktail kit,” with a mini-bottle of alcohol accompanied by the other ingredients and instructions for finishing the drink at home. (In April Alabama did enact a law to allow alcohol delivery starting this fall)
“We sold easily 50,000, maybe 100,000, to-go cocktails,” said Laura Newman, owner of the Queen’s Park in Birmingham, Alabama.
Restaurant and bar owners point to the successful adoption of to-go drinks during the pandemic as the reason why lawmakers were so quick to make the change long term.
“They realize they can trust people more. The laws don’t have to be as strict,” said Will Coffee, who opened Nashville’s Tacos with a Twist in the middle of the pandemic.
Even before the pandemic, momentum was building to legalize to-drinks, said Mike Whatley, vice president for state affairs and grassroots advocacy at the National Restaurant Association.
More than a dozen states, including Texas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana and North Carolina, allowed delivery of beer and wine but not cocktails from restaurants before the pandemic. In Georgia, the state legislature proposed allowing delivery of beer and wine in February 2019 before that session was suspended due to COVID-19. Cocktail, beer, wine and other beverages are now legal for to-go delivery in the state.
Broad changes to alcohol rules rarely happen this fast.
“The regulations that have changed on this topic would have taken 10 years, because alcohol is so regulated,” Whatley said.
In Tennessee, many believe the temporary change will eventually be made permanent.
“We feel like the longer it stays in law, the more permanent it will become. You change everyone’s habits,” said Bruce Fields, who owns the Nectar Urban Cantina in Nashville.
Selling booze off-site could boost a restaurant’s overall sales by 5 to 10%, according to estimates from the National Restaurant Association.
Not everyone, however, plans to take advantage of this liberation of libations.
The high-end restaurant Kimball House, located in Decatur, Georgia, just outside Atlanta, specializes in oysters and cocktails. Before the pandemic, they rarely sold take-out food. Although to-go orders for food, cocktails and even bags of unshucked oysters got Kimball House through the pandemic, they believe their customers want a return to the way things were.
“I don’t think to-go will be a huge part of our business,” said Miles Macquarrie, the restaurant’s co-owner and beverage director.
At The Atomic Lounge in Birmingham, co-owner Feizal Valli also has no interest in continuing to sell drinks to go. His bar is known as much for its funky atmosphere as it is for its cocktails, like the signature Legendary Sex Panther.
“I’m not in the liquor business. I’m in the experience business,” Valli said.
Even though Valli will not take advantage of Alabama’s new law, he still believes that it benefits him.
“When progressive things like that are happening in notoriously non-progressive states like Alabama, there is a ripple effect,” he said.
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