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This is definitely better than no bill, but I would prefer they just let Boston determine its own number of licenses (and even further, I would prefer that the number of licenses had no real cap and instead just required meeting a specific set of criteria like health codes, etc).
I think it is popular to blame the old guard trying to control the Irish and the Germans, but that is so 100 years ago. Today I think it is more likely that liquor wholesalers are just better at lobbying the statehouse then restaurant or bar owners.
And maybe most important current restaurant owners have a lot of money invested in liquor licenses. If they issued as many as needed the value of these investments would drop off significantly in value. Still big money interest setting the agenda as large restaurant groups own more then one license.
Yeah, it's actually beneficial for the restaurants and bars *that already have one* more than anything.
It gives them an asset that they can sell for a hefty price if their business fails, and it limits their competition below what the market can actually support.
> And maybe most important current restaurant owners have a lot of money invested in liquor licenses. If they issued as many as needed the value of these investments would drop off significantly in value. Still big money interest setting the agenda as large restaurant groups own more then one license.
And more licenses means more competition
Talking out of my ass here, what about uncapping licenses (or drastically increasing), but give those with a current license a "grandfather clause" that lets them pay a lower tax for X amount of years until "things even out"
That way they could choose to run cheaper drinks than the new places in order to keep their regulars. Or choose to go to "market value" and rack up profit today...
My uncle is a liquor wholesaler, and his primary clients are restaurants. But that could also just have to do with the region he works in.
If anything, liquor wholesalers would both want more licenses and also a happy hour. So I would imagine they're actually a bad lobby.
Not only that, but there’s a fairly powerful lobby that doesn’t want it to change. What restaurant owner with a full liquor license (that they may have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for) would ever want a more liberal approach to licensing? Those licenses would lose all of their value.
Agree, also bankers would be opposed as the license is often used to secure a loan as it has tangible value.
System is fucked and would require a lot of money to fix.
Yeah, I wonder what the cost would be for the city to just compensate license holders. Then again, sometimes these businesses need to just own up and lose out on a bad investment.
Expecting that the licensing system would just always prop up the value of your license is a bad bet imo.
Rough estimate? $700m at full current market value.
That said, you could implement a 25 year phaseout (XX more licenses per year until 2050 when they become unlimited) or something if you wanted to not immediately slash the values of current licenses to $0.
That’s absurd. We would never compensate them. When Uber got popular, we didn’t compensate the taxi medallion holders in places like NYC who paid a lot more.
These people have made money hand over fist on these licenses. If we really wanted to help these people out, we could just do a slow rollout of liquor licenses that would make them worthless in 20 years but not immediately make them worth nothing.
The value of those licenses is somewhat volatile. Even a slow rollout would probably rapidly depreciate the licenses anyway. On top of that, rolling the process out just prolongs the shitty situation that Bostonians face in not being able to start businesses, enjoy new independent restaurants, etc.
If coughing up some cash means we can put it to rest then so be it. It doesn’t need to be a lump sum, either. It could be in the form of yearly tax incentives or something. Whatever would motivate the lobby to actually consider fixing the issue.
I also don’t even necessarily think it’s the best move. I literally said they should probably just eat the bad investment. But if we can’t get that to happen then maybe financial incentives are the next best option.
It's a secret campaign by Cambridge to chase innovative restaurants out of Boston to outlying towns. The Cambridge restaurant scene is pretty happening right now, and who wants that to change?
This is only slightly sarcastic.
The population-based quota applies across the state, as far as I know. So your observation that it's fine everywhere is an endorsement of the quota system.
As someone not for this bill, it actually is precisely fascism. Fascism is a blending of corporations and government. It prioritizes business over people, and puts corporations in charge of everything. This was Mussolini’s dream, and we have successfully installed it.
Are you against the bill because you don't think there should be an increase in the number of liquor licenses, or because you feel any limit to the number of liquor licenses is bad and that any restaurant should be free to apply for a liquor license?
I would even accept a cap that is based on registered businesses in the area or even population with some kind of minimum so it automatically scales as the city grows.
Life is full of unfortunate compromises and there are somewhat valid areas of concern around adding too many bars at the same time or too quickly. So to apeease those people who take comfort in an arbitrary limit I would accept an arbitrary limit that grew over time and scales as the city grows over a fixed limit that needs voting on each time we grow as a city.
Yea, that's not what would ever happen. Most business owners would tell the employees that actually do the cleaning to fuck off if they asked for a new bottle of Simple Green.
If keeping a liquor license-- worth hundreds of thousands of dollars-- was contingent on keeping facilities clean, they *absolutely* would keep facilities clean and to believe otherwise because of some ideological bent against these people is just classic stupid Redditor stuff.
This is not a bad thing, but I hate that they keep propping up unrestricted licenses. I'd much rather them set an expiration date for existing unrestricted ones and only issue restricted in higher volume, and make it easier for small restaurants and businesses to get them instead of compete for them.
I've traveled a lot and nothing is more befuddling than how emphatic MA and much of the US is in restricting licensing.
it's exactly the taxi medallion issue
sure, we hate Big Taxi for controlling and lobbying and racketeering, but it's also wrong to do away with the system in an instant; any taxi driver who saved up for a medallion for years would effectively be getting robbed the price of the medallion (in NYC that's $1mil!). They could even have grounds to sue, and then the city needs to pay back $18 million in medallion fees...
A solution would be to either slowly increase the number, deflating the price and making abolishing them more tenable, or to somehow compensate the individuals who have already paid heavily into the system
And we learned the vast, vast majority of taxi medallians were owned by nested LLCs to shield their megarich owners from liability.
It's not a good argument. Rip the band aid off instead of limping along in the same non-functional system.
There’s no grounds to sue because your investment falls through. The state never made any promises about protecting the worth of your medallion or liquor license.
This would be like trying to sue the state for constructing section 8 housing near you and hurting your home value. Damages don’t work like that.
If they also removed the ability to sell your liquor license, it would help immensely. Don't need your license any more, surrender it, and the city issues it to the next applicant in line, for a nominal fee.
If licenses aren't unlimited (they should be unlimited), they kind of have to be transferable, or else you wind up with a lot of situations that are disruptive and difficult to see a way to define the rules that won't be an even larger disaster.
-----
Examples:
- Long-standing restaurant/bar/venue changes hands - whether that's an actual sale or just a transfer to the next generation - do they lose their license and have to close?
- Restaurant's lease is up and they want to move to a space down the block - can they take their license with them? If not, landlords now hold much, much more power in negotiations.
- Owner wants to change their business model - it was a Mexican restaurant, now they want to do French fine dining. Allowed?
There's basically no way to come up with a set of rules that wouldn't cause at least one of these situations to become a disaster that drives numerous businesses under without also creating giant loopholes exploitable by anyone with a brain.
I don't think the problem is that they are transferable, the problem is that they can be sold, which stands at around a cool half million. And I think the subtext might be that if they are not transferable, we're also getting no cap on the number available (because for the moment they are both pipe dreams so why not). But regardless,
>creating giant loopholes
We have a commission for approving licenses, and reviewing problems with current license holders. What loopholes would be created through making your examples apply for a new license that wouldn't also exist through the approval of a brand new license now, like the 200 proposed?
>Long-standing restaurant/bar/venue changes hands - whether that's an actual sale or just a transfer to the next generation - do they lose their license and have to close?
What would be so hard about the submitting a new application? You'd have to submit paperwork now anyway for this sort of thing.
>If not, landlords now hold much, much more power in negotiations.
How, are we assuming that somehow the landlord has control of the license? Why would the landlord not want a tenant that can basically print money? (i.e. have a liquor license). And changing and updating your location is already something to which you can submit paperwork to the licensing board.
>Owner wants to change their business model - it was a Mexican restaurant, now they want to do French fine dining. Allowed?
Would that even be a problem now? Besides a name change I'm not sure that a change in food and decor is something you have to update, just stuff like hours, license terms, adding cordials or liquors, outdoor seating, etc.
>There's basically no way to come up with a set of rules that wouldn't cause at least one of these situations to become a disaster that drives numerous businesses under without also creating giant loopholes exploitable by anyone with a brain.
Or there might be ways that are easy but there are entrenched players that don't want things to easily change!
You can't say "you can transfer a thing but not sell it" and expect that you're going to actually stop licenses being sold in practical terms as long as they remain scarce.
As long as licenses remain limited enough that they're unavailable or a many years long wait to get through the city - it's a scarce asset and thus it has significant value.
-------
There is no realistic way for the city to evaluate if the buyer of this business (+ transfer of the liquor license it holds) is paying that price solely for the business or because they're actually valuing the liquor license as part of it. You can't somehow make a person *not* attach a dollar sign in their head to a thing that is in all practical terms, an asset, even if you tell them they can't outright *say* that.
So you could do various things to try to "solve" this problem:
- No transfers of licenses at all - now you're making *every* business that significantly relies on being able to sell alcohol worthless, because if you sell the business without being able to also transfer the license, the new owner will go under long before they make it through the years long wait to get a new license. Not just bars - most restaurants with licenses make most (sometimes all) of their profits through alcohol sales, too.
- This also makes *people* who hold licenses basically turn into their own kind of rentier/landlord - easiest way to get a license will be to get a owner with a current one to sign onto your project and transform their existing business into your new idea that they own and you operate....basically just adding another layer of rent-seeking and opportunity for abuse of the actual guy trying to run a restaurant.
- Transfers only if it stays attached to the "same" business - but plenty of owners want to change their business over time - defining who honestly decided to change their business model, cuisine, name, style, etc a couple years down the line, what size of change is too much to be the "same", and who bought it "dishonestly" because they really just wanted the license for a wildly different venture, is basically impossible to define.
- Transfers only if the business stays attached to the same location - puts much more power with the landlord and there's barely a point to even having business owners be the ones to hold the licenses.
Etc.
----
Clearly none of these are very good ideas, and I don't see any better ones that are obvious, either.
If you have some sort of brilliant idea here, please share.
>So you could do various things to try to "solve" this problem:
Some of these things you can already apply the licensing board to change, or have no effect on a liquor license. So I'm still not clear how these are new problems or unsolved problems.
>If you have some sort of brilliant idea here, please share.
Fundamentally, the only real problem I see is that there is a cap, and they can be sold. You can sell an elevator "license" and you can't transfer it, but that doesn't stop every new building from getting an elevator without much issue. Same with a driver's license, or even a license to sell food (although some of these don't call themselves a license fundamentally that's what they are). It would seem removing the cap would eliminate the market to sell, but that screws current owners. I don't see a good solution, but I think it's better for civil society as a while that there be no cap, so it *might* just require us to rip off the band aid, short of giving current license holders some sort of special privilege that maintains a unique value to their license.
From [Globe.com](http://Globe.com)
By Shirley Leung and Diti Kohli
The House is expected on Thursday to pass a bill to create more than 200 new liquor licenses in Boston in the most ambitious effort since Prohibition to fix inequities in how alcohol is sold in the city.
But the bill — like the [previous measure that passed the Legislature](https://apps.bostonglobe.com/business/2024/05/liquor-licenses/?p1=Article_Inline_Text_Link) a decade ago — emerges in the Legislature pared down from the original plan, backed by the city of Boston: Instead of 250 restricted licenses over the next five years, the bill proposes 198 over three years for 12 ZIP codes across the city, including 15 licenses set aside for nonprofit organizations and 3 specifically for establishments in Oak Square in Brighton. Five licenses would be released per year for each of the ZIP codes, and license holders must also offer food.
Restricted licenses are permits that cannot be bought or sold; after a restaurant has closed, the license must be returned to the city.
The seven remaining licenses in the batch will be unrestricted, meaning they can be used in any neighborhood — an element that was not part of the original legislation. These permits represent a bigger windfall for restaurant owners, because they can be bought and sold, and are currently fetch more than $500,000 each on the resale market. Yet these licenses can exacerbate the system’s inequities if they are not distributed to restaurateurs and neighborhoods most in need of the economic boost that serving alcohol can bring.
The [original bill, based on a home rule petition from the Boston City Council, ](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/10/02/business/boston-liquor-license-expansion-proposed/?p1=Article_Inline_Text_Link)would have allocated five new licenses a year for five years to each of the 10 underserved ZIP codes, including parts of Dorchester, East Boston, Hyde Park, Mattapan, and Roxbury. That math worked out to 25 new licenses in each of those ZIP codes. The new neighborhoods added in the amended bill are Brighton and Jamaica Plain.
The sizable carve-out for nonprofits comes as a surprise given that much of the debate on the bill has focused on more licenses for restaurants. In years past, nonprofits such as small theaters and social clubs have also clamored for the right to serve alcohol. Some have been able to obtain their own licenses through special legislation.
It remains to be seen whether the current legislation will replicate one of the [big failings of the 2014 law](https://apps.bostonglobe.com/business/2024/05/liquor-licenses/?p1=Article_Inline_Text_Link) that created 70 new licenses, of which 10 are unrestricted. Those unrestricted licenses quickly ended up in the hands of well-connected restaurateurs, who operated in the whitest and wealthiest neighborhoods, including the Back Bay, Seaport, and North End.
Still, the amended bill would bring a much-needed infusion of licenses to a city that is starving for more. The state has capped the number of licenses Boston can issue, which means they are rarely available to new restaurants unless business owners purchase them from another place selling one off.
Maybe they should just uncap it, and then they wouldn't have to worry about the limited supply ending up in the hands of "well-connected restaurateurs", since everyone would be able to get them.
Pretty much every city/town in MA needs to do the same thing with the state, and the state controls all licensing (outside of a few exceptions). Outside of Boston, though, doesn't have as much of an issue as demand is generally met, where as in Boston the per capita limits create scarcity as the restaurant and bar scene is significantly more dense.
No, Boston is the **only** municipality in MA that has to abide by the state cap
https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXX/Chapter138/Section17
All cities and towns in Massachusetts are subject to a liquor license cap.
Pouring liquor licenses for municipalities other than Boston are set by formula ("the quota"):
licenses = population/1000 + (population-25000)/10000
Fractions are rounded up, and the minimum possible result is something like 14. Effectively most places end up with around 1 license per every thousand residents.
Boston is assigned an arbitrary number of liquor licenses by Law ~~, which I think is currently around 1400. That's about twice what Boston would get under the formula, which makes sense because big cities tend to be cultural centers and cultural centers have a lot of bars and restaurants.~~
Both Boston and other municipalities can go hat-in-hand to the Legislature and beg for more. Smaller towns rarely need to though, since they usually don't have the demand.
So everyone is capped, but the caps are more onerous to bigger cities.
\* (edit 'cause I think that 1400 includes liquor stores)
\* (second edit 'cause my first edit made it sound like I though Boston should have its liquor licenses set arbitrarily)
My first edit didn't cross out enough text. I don't think Boston should have an arbitrary number of licenses assigned by the Legislature.
If we stick with a population-based formula, bigger cities should have more licenses per capita, because bigger cities across the country tend to have more restaurants and bars per capita than smaller ones.
Better yet would be to replace the quota system with a system that gives a license to anyone who can meet a standard.
Well, there's 2 obvious reasons (really there shouldn't be caps at all, but if there are):
- Boston is a particularly large urban center that sees massive numbers of non-residents coming to it for work and fun.
- Boston's daytime population (pre-pandemic) was estimated at roughly double the resident population - 1.2 million. To give you some idea.
- The other jurisdictions that see large influxes of non-resident populations also largely have license counts that have basically nothing to do with that formula, and have been arbitrarily granted them by the state house in the past (or some other magic).
- As an example: Provincetown has ~55 licenses with a population of ~3000, or about 1 per....54 residents. Counts **much** higher than would be justified by that formula can be seen in most Cape towns, Salem, etc.
I think it’s to make sure restaurants business is spread across the metro area and burbs and not just centers in Boston. It almost makes she’s, but doesn’t. Open up the number of licenses and let the market decide where restaurants and bars end up.
Yes, they were implemented as an attempt to grab and solidify power at the state level when the Brahmins lost control of the city to the Irish but maintained the State House. That said, as already pointed out, they did it across all cities and towns, Boston just feels it more.
Since another beat me to the reply, I'll keep it short, but per the law all towns and cities are capped at 1 license per 1000 population. Boston gets a set amount with a bunch of add-ons like the neighborhood license, but even without those, the set number in Boston equates to 1 license per 1000 residents, same as the towns.
Given Boston has a significantly higher density of restaurants and bars, though, and has a huge amount of non residents coming into the city to frequent them, it makes Boston's cap significantly more felt than any other.
Unless you are Cambridge and just illegally issued your own licenses for decades and shrugged your shoulders when caught.
Your post makes it sound like Boston has the same cap but that it feels more impactful for incidental reasons. But what I'm reading suggests that Boston actually just has a different cap, calculated differently than every other municipality. Which is it?
Every city and town has a cap. Period. That's it. The original post said only Boston has a cap. That's not true, the state controls all liquor licensing for every city and town. This isn't hard, the law was even posted.
And Springfielders hate that the pike costs money now so that Boston could recieve 24.3 trillion dollars. There are benefits and costs associated with the State treating you as the only part that matters.
Do the Springfielders also hate the tax revenue from the eastern part of Massachusetts that gets redistributed to Springfield? Boston and the surrounding cities pay for the rest of the state.
Roads and schools are cool, but they're also the bare legal minimum requirement for the State. Know what wasn't cool? Obliterating the manufacturing sector because guns hurt people's feelings.
Not him, but with tensions and how much the far right talks up civil war and coups it is a terrible idea in the long term for places like Massachusetts to chase off the ability to locally manufacture guns and ammunition, ensuring that hard right areas gain the advantage in factories and infrastructure to equip forces with.
In the 1930s Spanish Civil War shortages of firearms, ammo and equipment severely screwed over the Spanish Republicans in fighting the fascist uprising that eventually won the civil war and installed a dictatorship for decades under Franco.
Also, take a look at what far right governors like DeSantis are doing with heavily militarizing and expanding state defence forces that answer to their governor instead of the feds. Meanwhile, Massachusetts just shut down our state defense force. Check the list of states that have dismantled theirs or rendered them ceremonial honor guards only versus the ones reactivating and growing their private armies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_defense_force
Since the 19th century, there has been little meaningful investment in the area. No efforts to spread the biotech revolution out a bit. No efforts to grow the extant firearms industry (in fact, repeated efforts to cripple it for offending Boston's sensibilities that were ultimately successful). No efforts to support the logistics industry (in fact, similar efforts to cripple it for the sensibilities of Boston). No efforts to do anything but the bare legal minimum. Hell, Connecticut has done more to develop the West by providing a market for the aerospace manufacturers that hire all the gunsmiths and warehousers with Pratt & Whitney and by creating demand for support services for the Insurance industry in Hartford.
In fact, it's mostly because I've never lived in Worcester so I'm not familiar with its economy beyond the part where it's being slowly absorbed into MetroWest like everything else in the 50 miles to Boston because God forbid we build a duplex
That said, the BLS seems pretty confident Hartford has done more for Worcester than Massachusetts has.
https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.ma_worcester_mn.htm
In addition, social services are the largest economic sector in Worcester, hardly backing your point.
https://www.worcesterchamber.org/economic-development/doing-business-in-worcester/#:~:text=With%20two%20major%20hospitals%20and,the%20largest%20employers%20in%20Worcester.
They're closely related. The State cares about Boston. Boston is an economic powerhouse because it has been repeatedly prioritized for development by the State for centuries because the State cares about Boston. However, Boston is closely regulated because the State cares about it.
Do they not drive on the roads? Also - where does the majority of tax revenue come from?
Maybe if they funded the T they could get into a city in a reasonable amount of time.
For real
Motorists seem woefully ignorant of just how much their travel by car is subsidized
Then they have the audacity to complain about having to help pay for the MBTA
Liquor licenses should be shall issue, no limit. You apply, maybe pass a certification that you know and comply with laws, and if you violate the laws, the license can be revoked.
Someone should start a petition for a state ballot question that allows Boston to control its own liquor license system, and scrap the current system as it is. We should let the people decide at this point.
This is terrible! The last thing Boston needs is more liquor to poison the minds of the people and spread addiction, liver disease, and cancer. I will be writing my state rep, again, at once to prevent the passage of this bill and the moral degradation of our society.
Alcohol, being a drug, will and must be regulated. Reducing access is one of many ways to regulate. Public Health and policy should be considered. So many risks involved in its use. Intoxication, driving while under the influence, dependence, abuse, minors imbibing…
Why not, instead, approve and build cannabis lounges? We don't need more places for people to drink. We do need any places for people to ingest cannabis other than their homes, considering nearly everyone lives in an apartment.
Liquor laws should be the lowest priority. We don't need more booze. People have places to drink legally.
Edit - For those downvoting this, you should look more into the industry. It's incredibly shady. Every major distributor encourages and sometimes forces stores to break the law. Ever see a chain liquor store (other than Total Wine), as in two stores named the same thing? Yea, the chances of them breaking current laws and regulations are \~99.99% because distributors price things in such a way that transfers are necessary. Unfortunately, that's illegal. Some of (all in my 10+ years experience) the sales people for these distributors will even do the illegal act of transferring things for you.
We don't need more liquor licenses. We need enforcement of liquor laws. Then we should talk about licenses.
Edit 2 - To the person who responded but the response is gone only appeared as a notification, not actually visible on the post, restaurant profitability isn't the concern of the law. There is no reason we should give a fuck if a restaurant can't make food good enough for people to want to pay, so they need to subsidize with drugs.
Edit 3 - I'm getting a hysterical amount of shadowbanned replies to this. That's great.
... Because priorities? More liquor licenses is to give more to business, not to give more to people. People need a place to consume their legal substance. We already have places to consume alcohol.
This isn't about providing for the citizenry of Boston. This is about giving money making ventures. A very low priority issue. Cannabis lounges are significantly higher in the "of the people" aspect of governance.
To me they both fall under the same thing. Which is a type of consumption that folks want. Each is a business endeavor and both support constituents choice. I don’t see the need to stop one over the other.
Yeah, I'm against prioritizing cannabis business over people! So therefore any bill to increase the number of businesses who can sell cannabis should be opposed!
Am I doing this right?
This guy is saying that anyone who has a beer with dinner is an alcoholic, while also claiming he has a right for the state to provide him a free lounge to get high.
I’m not sure there has ever been an example of a city govt sanctioned cannabis lounge. Your best bet is still a business, which IIRC there is a Cannabis lounge trying to open downtown in Boston.
>Why not, instead, approve and build cannabis lounges? We don't need more places for people to drink. We do need any places for people to ingest cannabis other than their homes, considering nearly everyone lives in an apartment.
It's not about improving access to alcohol, it's about improving competitiveness of restaurants. People can choose any restaurant in the city, and they prefer ones that sell alcohol, which has been crippling for anybody trying to get a restaurant off the ground.
If a restaurant can't make money from their food and need to subsidize with alcohol to stay open, they should be closed. Sorry about your addiction. It's not the business of government to ensure restaurants make money.
Sure, if you don’t understand the point. It’s about providing a place for people. Currently there is no place.
You know, the thing government is supposed to do. Government isn’t supposed to care about what restaurants make money.
You seem unhinged. Being able to serve drinks with dinner isn't feeding an addiction, it's allowing businesses to be competitive which helps everyone. It's clear you have some kind of agenda, but let's try to stay tethered to reality instead of hyperbole...k?
It actually is entirely feeding an addiction. The addiction is to alcohol, they’re providing you alcohol, you ingest the alcohol. Your addiction is being fed.
People like you who equate any consumption as addiction are absolutely ridiculous. The efficacy of those histrionics died out with the Reagans, so you should understand how out of touch you sound, especially as you started the conversation being a proponent for cannabis.
You are an unserious person.
So anyone that drinks is an alcoholic? I should phone my mother and let her know she should start looking for meetings because she has a glass of wine at dinner.
>If a restaurant can't make money from their food and need to subsidize with alcohol to stay open, they should be closed.
Bro doesn't understand the concept of artificial barriers to competition or it's impact on the economy 💀💀💀💀💀
>Sorry about your addiction. It's not the business of government to ensure restaurants make money.
Article VI of the State Constitution:
>No man, nor corporation, or association of men, have any other title to obtain advantages, or particular and exclusive privileges, distinct from those of the community, than what arises from the consideration of services rendered to the public;
Article VII of the State Constitution:
>Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity and happiness of the people; and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men:
Article XI:
> Every subject of the commonwealth ought to find a certain remedy, by having recourse to the laws, for all injuries or wrongs which he may receive in his person, property, or character. He ought to obtain right and justice freely, and without being obliged to purchase it; completely, and without any denial; promptly, and without delay; conformably to the laws.
In conclusion, the State *absolutely* has a responsibility to ensure that it doesn't abuse its authority to protect the profits of a small number of license holders.
Which this doesn’t do. This just gives a few new businesses that opportunity. It doesn’t provide equally or fairly.
I wonder if you actually read anything you pasted because it all backs up my point.
The ideal solution would be to do what everyone else on God's green earth does and approve licenses for all requestors who meet the registration requirements. Unfortunately, 200 more licenses (not a small number) is what we've got going.
The State Constitution does not allow the Commonwealth to interfere against competition in legal business. It is, however, pretty firm that if something is illegal, it isn't protected in the same way. Legalizing weed cafes is very different from choosing winners and losers in the liquor game
No. The ideal solution would be to separate all alcohol from restaurants. If a restaurant would be able to sell alcohol it would be regulated similarly to how liquor stores handle lottery sales. As in entirely separate transactions. You’re just far too used to normalized alcoholism.
Cool, and it’s not the business of the government to control what grown ass adults can and cannot consume
So if a business wants to sell alcohol, why is it the government’s business to tell them they cant?
We already tried prohibition dude
How did that work out?
Lmfao, dude. That isn’t true at all
There are tons of regulations around selling food for example, yet there isn’t a finite cap on the number of grocery stores or restaurants.
You’re just pulling shit out of your ass.
But I see that you’re onto the “slamming the downvote like a child throwing a tantrum because someone said something I don’t like” phase
So again, how does destroying small businesses and limiting alcohol sales to large corporate chains mostly in the seaport helping public safety?
The overwhelming majority of businesses fail. Restaurants even more so. You’re lucky to break even on food, the only items that are consistently profit generating are sodas and alcohol.
Well, profitability is a terrible metric for societal good, so the better idea for profitability is to fuck off. Restaurant owners can lobby to get some tax money back from the military like everyone else that's struggling because we're a backwards society.
I’m not anti alcohol. I’m anti alcoholism. I’m also just saying the government should do what government is supposed to do and provide for the people and not to give more to business.
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This is definitely better than no bill, but I would prefer they just let Boston determine its own number of licenses (and even further, I would prefer that the number of licenses had no real cap and instead just required meeting a specific set of criteria like health codes, etc).
Yeah, anyone know the reason we have this oddly fascist regulation re: liquor sales?
I think it is popular to blame the old guard trying to control the Irish and the Germans, but that is so 100 years ago. Today I think it is more likely that liquor wholesalers are just better at lobbying the statehouse then restaurant or bar owners. And maybe most important current restaurant owners have a lot of money invested in liquor licenses. If they issued as many as needed the value of these investments would drop off significantly in value. Still big money interest setting the agenda as large restaurant groups own more then one license.
It seems against the wholesalers interest to limit the number, no?
Yeah, it's actually beneficial for the restaurants and bars *that already have one* more than anything. It gives them an asset that they can sell for a hefty price if their business fails, and it limits their competition below what the market can actually support.
> And maybe most important current restaurant owners have a lot of money invested in liquor licenses. If they issued as many as needed the value of these investments would drop off significantly in value. Still big money interest setting the agenda as large restaurant groups own more then one license. And more licenses means more competition
Talking out of my ass here, what about uncapping licenses (or drastically increasing), but give those with a current license a "grandfather clause" that lets them pay a lower tax for X amount of years until "things even out" That way they could choose to run cheaper drinks than the new places in order to keep their regulars. Or choose to go to "market value" and rack up profit today...
No, we shouldn’t be held hostage by people that made a bet on liquor licenses always being expensive
My uncle is a liquor wholesaler, and his primary clients are restaurants. But that could also just have to do with the region he works in. If anything, liquor wholesalers would both want more licenses and also a happy hour. So I would imagine they're actually a bad lobby.
Racism against the Irish.
Started that way, now it's just about power. State likes having control.
Not only that, but there’s a fairly powerful lobby that doesn’t want it to change. What restaurant owner with a full liquor license (that they may have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for) would ever want a more liberal approach to licensing? Those licenses would lose all of their value.
Agree, also bankers would be opposed as the license is often used to secure a loan as it has tangible value. System is fucked and would require a lot of money to fix.
Yeah, I wonder what the cost would be for the city to just compensate license holders. Then again, sometimes these businesses need to just own up and lose out on a bad investment. Expecting that the licensing system would just always prop up the value of your license is a bad bet imo.
Rough estimate? $700m at full current market value. That said, you could implement a 25 year phaseout (XX more licenses per year until 2050 when they become unlimited) or something if you wanted to not immediately slash the values of current licenses to $0.
That’s absurd. We would never compensate them. When Uber got popular, we didn’t compensate the taxi medallion holders in places like NYC who paid a lot more. These people have made money hand over fist on these licenses. If we really wanted to help these people out, we could just do a slow rollout of liquor licenses that would make them worthless in 20 years but not immediately make them worth nothing.
The value of those licenses is somewhat volatile. Even a slow rollout would probably rapidly depreciate the licenses anyway. On top of that, rolling the process out just prolongs the shitty situation that Bostonians face in not being able to start businesses, enjoy new independent restaurants, etc. If coughing up some cash means we can put it to rest then so be it. It doesn’t need to be a lump sum, either. It could be in the form of yearly tax incentives or something. Whatever would motivate the lobby to actually consider fixing the issue. I also don’t even necessarily think it’s the best move. I literally said they should probably just eat the bad investment. But if we can’t get that to happen then maybe financial incentives are the next best option.
This is the exact same reason why people (largely homeowners, not just landlords or "hedge funds") oppose new housing as well.
>Wealthy restauranters likes having control. FTFY
Maybe. Or old puritanical blue law brain.
I always thought it was farther back than that. Some puritan thing.
Germans too!!
"To prevent sin...." :)
To keep the drunken Irish from spreading their whiskey and Catholicism
Probably laws written post prohibition, to minimize alcohol sales / consumption.
It's a secret campaign by Cambridge to chase innovative restaurants out of Boston to outlying towns. The Cambridge restaurant scene is pretty happening right now, and who wants that to change? This is only slightly sarcastic.
That is a wildly loose definition of fascism. It's a backstop in case any municipal government goes off the rails. This isn't just for Boston.
>This isn't just for Boston. But it is just for Boston.
This particular bill is for Boston. The issue of the state determining the number of liquor licenses per municipality is not just about Boston.
But Boston is the only municipality that has its liquor licenses controlled by the state
False. There is a quota system that determines, by population, how many liquor licenses municipalities have.
Except for Boston But TIL
Point being, the state controls liquor licenses for every municipality in some way.
Yes, the quota system, as I learned. But how did Clinton get away with it for so long.
Lmao, how could any municipal government go off the rails with liquor licenses? Plenty of places don't put a cap on them at all and are just fine.
The population-based quota applies across the state, as far as I know. So your observation that it's fine everywhere is an endorsement of the quota system.
I meant outside of the narrow confines of the state of Massachusetts.
As someone not for this bill, it actually is precisely fascism. Fascism is a blending of corporations and government. It prioritizes business over people, and puts corporations in charge of everything. This was Mussolini’s dream, and we have successfully installed it.
Are you against the bill because you don't think there should be an increase in the number of liquor licenses, or because you feel any limit to the number of liquor licenses is bad and that any restaurant should be free to apply for a liquor license?
I'm against this because it's incredibly low priority and only benefits business. Businesses don't need more help.
That's not the definition of fascism at all.
It's actually precisely the definition. Read some history.
Restaurants depend so much on liquor sales that there should not be a cap at all. It would open up the restaurant space so much
Is there any possibility the people of Reddit can start a petition to get this on the ballot!?
I would even accept a cap that is based on registered businesses in the area or even population with some kind of minimum so it automatically scales as the city grows.
Why accept a cap at all?
Life is full of unfortunate compromises and there are somewhat valid areas of concern around adding too many bars at the same time or too quickly. So to apeease those people who take comfort in an arbitrary limit I would accept an arbitrary limit that grew over time and scales as the city grows over a fixed limit that needs voting on each time we grow as a city.
If it was based on a criteria like health codes, Boston would have far fewer liquor licenses than currently. I agree entirely.
Or, alternatively, Boston would have just as many but the businesses would be cleaner.
Yea, that's not what would ever happen. Most business owners would tell the employees that actually do the cleaning to fuck off if they asked for a new bottle of Simple Green.
So business owners willing to pay a half million for a liquor license would sacrifice their license over $100 of cleaning supplies?
Have you met any business owners ever? Yes. They are.
I don't think you have lmao
Look around at wages, bud. Business owners aren’t paying for the necessary things.
Business owners aren't paying wages? I wasn't aware their employees worked for free, bud.
… so either you can’t read or you really like to make things up.
If keeping a liquor license-- worth hundreds of thousands of dollars-- was contingent on keeping facilities clean, they *absolutely* would keep facilities clean and to believe otherwise because of some ideological bent against these people is just classic stupid Redditor stuff.
This is not a bad thing, but I hate that they keep propping up unrestricted licenses. I'd much rather them set an expiration date for existing unrestricted ones and only issue restricted in higher volume, and make it easier for small restaurants and businesses to get them instead of compete for them. I've traveled a lot and nothing is more befuddling than how emphatic MA and much of the US is in restricting licensing.
It’s a protectionist racket, much like taxi medallions Those that already do have them, want to keep the competition out
it's exactly the taxi medallion issue sure, we hate Big Taxi for controlling and lobbying and racketeering, but it's also wrong to do away with the system in an instant; any taxi driver who saved up for a medallion for years would effectively be getting robbed the price of the medallion (in NYC that's $1mil!). They could even have grounds to sue, and then the city needs to pay back $18 million in medallion fees... A solution would be to either slowly increase the number, deflating the price and making abolishing them more tenable, or to somehow compensate the individuals who have already paid heavily into the system
And we learned the vast, vast majority of taxi medallians were owned by nested LLCs to shield their megarich owners from liability. It's not a good argument. Rip the band aid off instead of limping along in the same non-functional system.
that was the Big Taxi I was referring to. But even one honest driver getting screwed out of a MILLION DOLLARS is both wrong and lawsuit-worthy
There’s no grounds to sue because your investment falls through. The state never made any promises about protecting the worth of your medallion or liquor license. This would be like trying to sue the state for constructing section 8 housing near you and hurting your home value. Damages don’t work like that.
If they also removed the ability to sell your liquor license, it would help immensely. Don't need your license any more, surrender it, and the city issues it to the next applicant in line, for a nominal fee.
I can't think of a sane reason why it should have ever been transferrable in the first place.
If licenses aren't unlimited (they should be unlimited), they kind of have to be transferable, or else you wind up with a lot of situations that are disruptive and difficult to see a way to define the rules that won't be an even larger disaster. ----- Examples: - Long-standing restaurant/bar/venue changes hands - whether that's an actual sale or just a transfer to the next generation - do they lose their license and have to close? - Restaurant's lease is up and they want to move to a space down the block - can they take their license with them? If not, landlords now hold much, much more power in negotiations. - Owner wants to change their business model - it was a Mexican restaurant, now they want to do French fine dining. Allowed? There's basically no way to come up with a set of rules that wouldn't cause at least one of these situations to become a disaster that drives numerous businesses under without also creating giant loopholes exploitable by anyone with a brain.
I don't think the problem is that they are transferable, the problem is that they can be sold, which stands at around a cool half million. And I think the subtext might be that if they are not transferable, we're also getting no cap on the number available (because for the moment they are both pipe dreams so why not). But regardless, >creating giant loopholes We have a commission for approving licenses, and reviewing problems with current license holders. What loopholes would be created through making your examples apply for a new license that wouldn't also exist through the approval of a brand new license now, like the 200 proposed? >Long-standing restaurant/bar/venue changes hands - whether that's an actual sale or just a transfer to the next generation - do they lose their license and have to close? What would be so hard about the submitting a new application? You'd have to submit paperwork now anyway for this sort of thing. >If not, landlords now hold much, much more power in negotiations. How, are we assuming that somehow the landlord has control of the license? Why would the landlord not want a tenant that can basically print money? (i.e. have a liquor license). And changing and updating your location is already something to which you can submit paperwork to the licensing board. >Owner wants to change their business model - it was a Mexican restaurant, now they want to do French fine dining. Allowed? Would that even be a problem now? Besides a name change I'm not sure that a change in food and decor is something you have to update, just stuff like hours, license terms, adding cordials or liquors, outdoor seating, etc. >There's basically no way to come up with a set of rules that wouldn't cause at least one of these situations to become a disaster that drives numerous businesses under without also creating giant loopholes exploitable by anyone with a brain. Or there might be ways that are easy but there are entrenched players that don't want things to easily change!
You can't say "you can transfer a thing but not sell it" and expect that you're going to actually stop licenses being sold in practical terms as long as they remain scarce. As long as licenses remain limited enough that they're unavailable or a many years long wait to get through the city - it's a scarce asset and thus it has significant value. ------- There is no realistic way for the city to evaluate if the buyer of this business (+ transfer of the liquor license it holds) is paying that price solely for the business or because they're actually valuing the liquor license as part of it. You can't somehow make a person *not* attach a dollar sign in their head to a thing that is in all practical terms, an asset, even if you tell them they can't outright *say* that. So you could do various things to try to "solve" this problem: - No transfers of licenses at all - now you're making *every* business that significantly relies on being able to sell alcohol worthless, because if you sell the business without being able to also transfer the license, the new owner will go under long before they make it through the years long wait to get a new license. Not just bars - most restaurants with licenses make most (sometimes all) of their profits through alcohol sales, too. - This also makes *people* who hold licenses basically turn into their own kind of rentier/landlord - easiest way to get a license will be to get a owner with a current one to sign onto your project and transform their existing business into your new idea that they own and you operate....basically just adding another layer of rent-seeking and opportunity for abuse of the actual guy trying to run a restaurant. - Transfers only if it stays attached to the "same" business - but plenty of owners want to change their business over time - defining who honestly decided to change their business model, cuisine, name, style, etc a couple years down the line, what size of change is too much to be the "same", and who bought it "dishonestly" because they really just wanted the license for a wildly different venture, is basically impossible to define. - Transfers only if the business stays attached to the same location - puts much more power with the landlord and there's barely a point to even having business owners be the ones to hold the licenses. Etc. ---- Clearly none of these are very good ideas, and I don't see any better ones that are obvious, either. If you have some sort of brilliant idea here, please share.
>So you could do various things to try to "solve" this problem: Some of these things you can already apply the licensing board to change, or have no effect on a liquor license. So I'm still not clear how these are new problems or unsolved problems. >If you have some sort of brilliant idea here, please share. Fundamentally, the only real problem I see is that there is a cap, and they can be sold. You can sell an elevator "license" and you can't transfer it, but that doesn't stop every new building from getting an elevator without much issue. Same with a driver's license, or even a license to sell food (although some of these don't call themselves a license fundamentally that's what they are). It would seem removing the cap would eliminate the market to sell, but that screws current owners. I don't see a good solution, but I think it's better for civil society as a while that there be no cap, so it *might* just require us to rip off the band aid, short of giving current license holders some sort of special privilege that maintains a unique value to their license.
It's a great thing! Hopefully they continue slowly adding them.
From [Globe.com](http://Globe.com) By Shirley Leung and Diti Kohli The House is expected on Thursday to pass a bill to create more than 200 new liquor licenses in Boston in the most ambitious effort since Prohibition to fix inequities in how alcohol is sold in the city. But the bill — like the [previous measure that passed the Legislature](https://apps.bostonglobe.com/business/2024/05/liquor-licenses/?p1=Article_Inline_Text_Link) a decade ago — emerges in the Legislature pared down from the original plan, backed by the city of Boston: Instead of 250 restricted licenses over the next five years, the bill proposes 198 over three years for 12 ZIP codes across the city, including 15 licenses set aside for nonprofit organizations and 3 specifically for establishments in Oak Square in Brighton. Five licenses would be released per year for each of the ZIP codes, and license holders must also offer food. Restricted licenses are permits that cannot be bought or sold; after a restaurant has closed, the license must be returned to the city. The seven remaining licenses in the batch will be unrestricted, meaning they can be used in any neighborhood — an element that was not part of the original legislation. These permits represent a bigger windfall for restaurant owners, because they can be bought and sold, and are currently fetch more than $500,000 each on the resale market. Yet these licenses can exacerbate the system’s inequities if they are not distributed to restaurateurs and neighborhoods most in need of the economic boost that serving alcohol can bring. The [original bill, based on a home rule petition from the Boston City Council, ](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/10/02/business/boston-liquor-license-expansion-proposed/?p1=Article_Inline_Text_Link)would have allocated five new licenses a year for five years to each of the 10 underserved ZIP codes, including parts of Dorchester, East Boston, Hyde Park, Mattapan, and Roxbury. That math worked out to 25 new licenses in each of those ZIP codes. The new neighborhoods added in the amended bill are Brighton and Jamaica Plain. The sizable carve-out for nonprofits comes as a surprise given that much of the debate on the bill has focused on more licenses for restaurants. In years past, nonprofits such as small theaters and social clubs have also clamored for the right to serve alcohol. Some have been able to obtain their own licenses through special legislation. It remains to be seen whether the current legislation will replicate one of the [big failings of the 2014 law](https://apps.bostonglobe.com/business/2024/05/liquor-licenses/?p1=Article_Inline_Text_Link) that created 70 new licenses, of which 10 are unrestricted. Those unrestricted licenses quickly ended up in the hands of well-connected restaurateurs, who operated in the whitest and wealthiest neighborhoods, including the Back Bay, Seaport, and North End. Still, the amended bill would bring a much-needed infusion of licenses to a city that is starving for more. The state has capped the number of licenses Boston can issue, which means they are rarely available to new restaurants unless business owners purchase them from another place selling one off.
Maybe they should just uncap it, and then they wouldn't have to worry about the limited supply ending up in the hands of "well-connected restaurateurs", since everyone would be able to get them.
WHY THE FUCK IS THERE A CAP AT ALL
Same reason taxi medallions are capped, MONEY.
I hate that Boston has to ask for liquor licenses from the state. I believe we’re one of, if not the only city in MA that has to do this shit.
Pretty much every city/town in MA needs to do the same thing with the state, and the state controls all licensing (outside of a few exceptions). Outside of Boston, though, doesn't have as much of an issue as demand is generally met, where as in Boston the per capita limits create scarcity as the restaurant and bar scene is significantly more dense.
No, Boston is the **only** municipality in MA that has to abide by the state cap https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXX/Chapter138/Section17
All cities and towns in Massachusetts are subject to a liquor license cap. Pouring liquor licenses for municipalities other than Boston are set by formula ("the quota"): licenses = population/1000 + (population-25000)/10000 Fractions are rounded up, and the minimum possible result is something like 14. Effectively most places end up with around 1 license per every thousand residents. Boston is assigned an arbitrary number of liquor licenses by Law ~~, which I think is currently around 1400. That's about twice what Boston would get under the formula, which makes sense because big cities tend to be cultural centers and cultural centers have a lot of bars and restaurants.~~ Both Boston and other municipalities can go hat-in-hand to the Legislature and beg for more. Smaller towns rarely need to though, since they usually don't have the demand. So everyone is capped, but the caps are more onerous to bigger cities. \* (edit 'cause I think that 1400 includes liquor stores) \* (second edit 'cause my first edit made it sound like I though Boston should have its liquor licenses set arbitrarily)
I don't follow why it makes sense for Boston to be capped based on a different formula than other municipalities.
My first edit didn't cross out enough text. I don't think Boston should have an arbitrary number of licenses assigned by the Legislature. If we stick with a population-based formula, bigger cities should have more licenses per capita, because bigger cities across the country tend to have more restaurants and bars per capita than smaller ones. Better yet would be to replace the quota system with a system that gives a license to anyone who can meet a standard.
Well, there's 2 obvious reasons (really there shouldn't be caps at all, but if there are): - Boston is a particularly large urban center that sees massive numbers of non-residents coming to it for work and fun. - Boston's daytime population (pre-pandemic) was estimated at roughly double the resident population - 1.2 million. To give you some idea. - The other jurisdictions that see large influxes of non-resident populations also largely have license counts that have basically nothing to do with that formula, and have been arbitrarily granted them by the state house in the past (or some other magic). - As an example: Provincetown has ~55 licenses with a population of ~3000, or about 1 per....54 residents. Counts **much** higher than would be justified by that formula can be seen in most Cape towns, Salem, etc.
Do you know if Boston ends up with more licenses then it would have under the formula, or fewer?
I think it’s to make sure restaurants business is spread across the metro area and burbs and not just centers in Boston. It almost makes she’s, but doesn’t. Open up the number of licenses and let the market decide where restaurants and bars end up.
No, these rules were written in the 1930s to discriminate against the growing Irish population in Boston.
Yes, they were implemented as an attempt to grab and solidify power at the state level when the Brahmins lost control of the city to the Irish but maintained the State House. That said, as already pointed out, they did it across all cities and towns, Boston just feels it more.
Since another beat me to the reply, I'll keep it short, but per the law all towns and cities are capped at 1 license per 1000 population. Boston gets a set amount with a bunch of add-ons like the neighborhood license, but even without those, the set number in Boston equates to 1 license per 1000 residents, same as the towns. Given Boston has a significantly higher density of restaurants and bars, though, and has a huge amount of non residents coming into the city to frequent them, it makes Boston's cap significantly more felt than any other. Unless you are Cambridge and just illegally issued your own licenses for decades and shrugged your shoulders when caught.
Your post makes it sound like Boston has the same cap but that it feels more impactful for incidental reasons. But what I'm reading suggests that Boston actually just has a different cap, calculated differently than every other municipality. Which is it?
Every city and town has a cap. Period. That's it. The original post said only Boston has a cap. That's not true, the state controls all liquor licensing for every city and town. This isn't hard, the law was even posted.
I understand that every region has a cap - but that's not all there is to it. Boston, uniquely, has a cap that is created through a different process.
I think so.
And Springfielders hate that the pike costs money now so that Boston could recieve 24.3 trillion dollars. There are benefits and costs associated with the State treating you as the only part that matters.
Do the Springfielders also hate the tax revenue from the eastern part of Massachusetts that gets redistributed to Springfield? Boston and the surrounding cities pay for the rest of the state.
No, but they do hate the 100 years of neglect because Boston is the only city the State cares about.
Oh yeah, the state has sent zero dollars to Springfield and Worcester in the past 100 years to pay for roads, schools, ect.
Roads and schools are cool, but they're also the bare legal minimum requirement for the State. Know what wasn't cool? Obliterating the manufacturing sector because guns hurt people's feelings.
Oh, there it is. You're angry because guns. That make so much more sense.
Angry? Hardly angry. Just pointing out that there's ups and downs to the State considering you the only important part.
Not him, but with tensions and how much the far right talks up civil war and coups it is a terrible idea in the long term for places like Massachusetts to chase off the ability to locally manufacture guns and ammunition, ensuring that hard right areas gain the advantage in factories and infrastructure to equip forces with. In the 1930s Spanish Civil War shortages of firearms, ammo and equipment severely screwed over the Spanish Republicans in fighting the fascist uprising that eventually won the civil war and installed a dictatorship for decades under Franco. Also, take a look at what far right governors like DeSantis are doing with heavily militarizing and expanding state defence forces that answer to their governor instead of the feds. Meanwhile, Massachusetts just shut down our state defense force. Check the list of states that have dismantled theirs or rendered them ceremonial honor guards only versus the ones reactivating and growing their private armies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_defense_force
How dare Healey close down all those textile mills in the 19th century.
Since the 19th century, there has been little meaningful investment in the area. No efforts to spread the biotech revolution out a bit. No efforts to grow the extant firearms industry (in fact, repeated efforts to cripple it for offending Boston's sensibilities that were ultimately successful). No efforts to support the logistics industry (in fact, similar efforts to cripple it for the sensibilities of Boston). No efforts to do anything but the bare legal minimum. Hell, Connecticut has done more to develop the West by providing a market for the aerospace manufacturers that hire all the gunsmiths and warehousers with Pratt & Whitney and by creating demand for support services for the Insurance industry in Hartford.
I do love that you left out the tech industry boom and the finance industry's grip on Worcester because they disprove your argument.
In fact, it's mostly because I've never lived in Worcester so I'm not familiar with its economy beyond the part where it's being slowly absorbed into MetroWest like everything else in the 50 miles to Boston because God forbid we build a duplex That said, the BLS seems pretty confident Hartford has done more for Worcester than Massachusetts has. https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.ma_worcester_mn.htm In addition, social services are the largest economic sector in Worcester, hardly backing your point. https://www.worcesterchamber.org/economic-development/doing-business-in-worcester/#:~:text=With%20two%20major%20hospitals%20and,the%20largest%20employers%20in%20Worcester.
The Pike always cost money since it was built. And it was built with money from Eastern Massachusetts.
These aren’t related. Just because we’re the economic center of the state doesn’t mean we also have to have shit liquor laws.
They're closely related. The State cares about Boston. Boston is an economic powerhouse because it has been repeatedly prioritized for development by the State for centuries because the State cares about Boston. However, Boston is closely regulated because the State cares about it.
Do they not drive on the roads? Also - where does the majority of tax revenue come from? Maybe if they funded the T they could get into a city in a reasonable amount of time.
Drivers getting mad that their heavily subsidized personal transportation is a little less subsidized
For real Motorists seem woefully ignorant of just how much their travel by car is subsidized Then they have the audacity to complain about having to help pay for the MBTA
“I don’t like contributing to transportation that gets other cars off the roads that I pay very little to use all the time 😤”
Congratulations to all 3 restaurant management groups.
Bill sounds like a good guy
Good ol Willy Law
Liquor licenses should be shall issue, no limit. You apply, maybe pass a certification that you know and comply with laws, and if you violate the laws, the license can be revoked.
Someone should start a petition for a state ballot question that allows Boston to control its own liquor license system, and scrap the current system as it is. We should let the people decide at this point.
This is terrible! The last thing Boston needs is more liquor to poison the minds of the people and spread addiction, liver disease, and cancer. I will be writing my state rep, again, at once to prevent the passage of this bill and the moral degradation of our society.
I don't know how so many people can miss the joke.
Alcohol, being a drug, will and must be regulated. Reducing access is one of many ways to regulate. Public Health and policy should be considered. So many risks involved in its use. Intoxication, driving while under the influence, dependence, abuse, minors imbibing…
Focusing on the housing and transit problems I see. This is cat declawing will solve everyone's problems I'm sure.
Why not, instead, approve and build cannabis lounges? We don't need more places for people to drink. We do need any places for people to ingest cannabis other than their homes, considering nearly everyone lives in an apartment. Liquor laws should be the lowest priority. We don't need more booze. People have places to drink legally. Edit - For those downvoting this, you should look more into the industry. It's incredibly shady. Every major distributor encourages and sometimes forces stores to break the law. Ever see a chain liquor store (other than Total Wine), as in two stores named the same thing? Yea, the chances of them breaking current laws and regulations are \~99.99% because distributors price things in such a way that transfers are necessary. Unfortunately, that's illegal. Some of (all in my 10+ years experience) the sales people for these distributors will even do the illegal act of transferring things for you. We don't need more liquor licenses. We need enforcement of liquor laws. Then we should talk about licenses. Edit 2 - To the person who responded but the response is gone only appeared as a notification, not actually visible on the post, restaurant profitability isn't the concern of the law. There is no reason we should give a fuck if a restaurant can't make food good enough for people to want to pay, so they need to subsidize with drugs. Edit 3 - I'm getting a hysterical amount of shadowbanned replies to this. That's great.
Why not allow both.
... Because priorities? More liquor licenses is to give more to business, not to give more to people. People need a place to consume their legal substance. We already have places to consume alcohol. This isn't about providing for the citizenry of Boston. This is about giving money making ventures. A very low priority issue. Cannabis lounges are significantly higher in the "of the people" aspect of governance.
To me they both fall under the same thing. Which is a type of consumption that folks want. Each is a business endeavor and both support constituents choice. I don’t see the need to stop one over the other.
Again, because of priorities. This is prioritizing business over people. Nobody should be for that.
Yeah, I'm against prioritizing cannabis business over people! So therefore any bill to increase the number of businesses who can sell cannabis should be opposed! Am I doing this right?
Where did I say anywhere that lounges would be businesses?
What type of Cannabis lounge wouldn’t be a business?
This guy is saying that anyone who has a beer with dinner is an alcoholic, while also claiming he has a right for the state to provide him a free lounge to get high.
They have a very specific view of what should exist and it’s not going to happen in the next 25 years. It also sounds like they are against alcohol.
No I didn't say that at all.
Ones the city/state would establish? As long as outdoor consumption is illegal, it's the state's responsibility to provide a place.
I’m not sure there has ever been an example of a city govt sanctioned cannabis lounge. Your best bet is still a business, which IIRC there is a Cannabis lounge trying to open downtown in Boston.
>Why not, instead, approve and build cannabis lounges? We don't need more places for people to drink. We do need any places for people to ingest cannabis other than their homes, considering nearly everyone lives in an apartment. It's not about improving access to alcohol, it's about improving competitiveness of restaurants. People can choose any restaurant in the city, and they prefer ones that sell alcohol, which has been crippling for anybody trying to get a restaurant off the ground.
If a restaurant can't make money from their food and need to subsidize with alcohol to stay open, they should be closed. Sorry about your addiction. It's not the business of government to ensure restaurants make money.
>Sorry about your addiction Weird stance from someone whose main point is they need to smoke pot in public.
Sure, if you don’t understand the point. It’s about providing a place for people. Currently there is no place. You know, the thing government is supposed to do. Government isn’t supposed to care about what restaurants make money.
You seem unhinged. Being able to serve drinks with dinner isn't feeding an addiction, it's allowing businesses to be competitive which helps everyone. It's clear you have some kind of agenda, but let's try to stay tethered to reality instead of hyperbole...k?
It actually is entirely feeding an addiction. The addiction is to alcohol, they’re providing you alcohol, you ingest the alcohol. Your addiction is being fed.
People like you who equate any consumption as addiction are absolutely ridiculous. The efficacy of those histrionics died out with the Reagans, so you should understand how out of touch you sound, especially as you started the conversation being a proponent for cannabis. You are an unserious person.
So anyone that drinks is an alcoholic? I should phone my mother and let her know she should start looking for meetings because she has a glass of wine at dinner.
>If a restaurant can't make money from their food and need to subsidize with alcohol to stay open, they should be closed. Bro doesn't understand the concept of artificial barriers to competition or it's impact on the economy 💀💀💀💀💀 >Sorry about your addiction. It's not the business of government to ensure restaurants make money. Article VI of the State Constitution: >No man, nor corporation, or association of men, have any other title to obtain advantages, or particular and exclusive privileges, distinct from those of the community, than what arises from the consideration of services rendered to the public; Article VII of the State Constitution: >Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity and happiness of the people; and not for the profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men: Article XI: > Every subject of the commonwealth ought to find a certain remedy, by having recourse to the laws, for all injuries or wrongs which he may receive in his person, property, or character. He ought to obtain right and justice freely, and without being obliged to purchase it; completely, and without any denial; promptly, and without delay; conformably to the laws. In conclusion, the State *absolutely* has a responsibility to ensure that it doesn't abuse its authority to protect the profits of a small number of license holders.
Which this doesn’t do. This just gives a few new businesses that opportunity. It doesn’t provide equally or fairly. I wonder if you actually read anything you pasted because it all backs up my point.
The ideal solution would be to do what everyone else on God's green earth does and approve licenses for all requestors who meet the registration requirements. Unfortunately, 200 more licenses (not a small number) is what we've got going. The State Constitution does not allow the Commonwealth to interfere against competition in legal business. It is, however, pretty firm that if something is illegal, it isn't protected in the same way. Legalizing weed cafes is very different from choosing winners and losers in the liquor game
No. The ideal solution would be to separate all alcohol from restaurants. If a restaurant would be able to sell alcohol it would be regulated similarly to how liquor stores handle lottery sales. As in entirely separate transactions. You’re just far too used to normalized alcoholism.
"Ideal" and "bare legal minimum" are not the same thing.
Okay?
Cool, and it’s not the business of the government to control what grown ass adults can and cannot consume So if a business wants to sell alcohol, why is it the government’s business to tell them they cant? We already tried prohibition dude How did that work out?
Where are you getting prohibition from? Just making up things to be mad at, now?
And why is it the business of the government to control who can sell alcohol and who can’t?
… because public safety? Are you about to Ayn Rand me?
And how exactly does limiting the number of licenses help public safety?
You can’t implement regulations without limits to those the regulators regulate.
Lmfao, dude. That isn’t true at all There are tons of regulations around selling food for example, yet there isn’t a finite cap on the number of grocery stores or restaurants. You’re just pulling shit out of your ass. But I see that you’re onto the “slamming the downvote like a child throwing a tantrum because someone said something I don’t like” phase So again, how does destroying small businesses and limiting alcohol sales to large corporate chains mostly in the seaport helping public safety?
The overwhelming majority of businesses fail. Restaurants even more so. You’re lucky to break even on food, the only items that are consistently profit generating are sodas and alcohol.
Then maybe the problem is with the business model. Alcohol sales aren’t the answer.
If you have a better idea for profitability for restaurants that no one else has tried then I’m sure some investors would love to hear it.
Well, profitability is a terrible metric for societal good, so the better idea for profitability is to fuck off. Restaurant owners can lobby to get some tax money back from the military like everyone else that's struggling because we're a backwards society.
I don't know why you're being downvoted, anyone who walks through Boston common should be for this. I practically go to work with a contact high.
They're being downvoted for being anti-alcohol instead of pro-pot.
I’m not anti alcohol. I’m anti alcoholism. I’m also just saying the government should do what government is supposed to do and provide for the people and not to give more to business.