What Does the Future Hold for MA Liquor Laws?

Photos by Michael Piazza; cocktails by Orange Door Kitchen

Can to-go cocktails save restaurants during the pandemic? No, but they can show the state a future with a more relaxed approach.

The last time I had a drink in a crowded room, my hands trembled with anxiety. It was March 11. I had gone alone to Holyoke to see a band play, my friend having skipped it out of fear of the novel coronavirus. It had migrated from China to the United States by then and begun its spread; the first case in Boston had arrived on February 1, but it still felt far away. Then, on March 6, three cases emerged in Boston. March 8, five more. Two days later, Governor Charlie Baker announced a State of Emergency. This, I told myself, was my shot at a last night out before the world stopped. 

I ordered a Miller Lite and stood as far from anyone as I could. I pulled away from contact—arms clenched across my body, hugging my lungs, hoping to keep them safe. I knew I would miss this feeling of a bar, of other people. I didn’t know for how long I’d miss it. I soaked it in.

I couldn’t have anticipated at the time how much would change in just a few months. How long it would be before I had a drink or ate food inside a restaurant or bar. How Massachusetts’ liquor laws would be forced to change, finally, because a huge segment of the state’s economy and workforce would be unemployed with the threat of permanent mass closures close behind. 

On March 15, Governor Baker shut the state down. Bars and restaurants had two days to close. On March 23, he announced all non-essential workers needed to stay home, but takeout restaurants and liquor stores could stay open. 

Takeout proved to be a lifeline for some restaurants, which the week before had had to close with no way to pay rent, employees or their taxes. Owning an independent restaurant or bar is a notoriously difficult business: The margins are small, staffs large and the bills astronomical. There’s the oft-cited Ohio State University study that reports 60% of restaurants don’t make it out of their first year and 80% never see their fifth anniversary. While the exact numbers can be disputed, just notice how often a sign changes in front of a restaurant space for anecdotal evidence of repeated turnover. 

To stay cash positive during the pandemic, or even tread above the debt line, restaurants and bars needed something besides takeout, especially as third-party apps (like Uber and DoorDash) were pocketing up to a third of each sale. A huge driver of income for restaurants comes from alcohol sales, and to-go alcohol was not allowed before the pandemic under the state’s famously strict liquor laws. To try to mitigate lost revenue, on April 3 Governor Baker signed a bill allowing beer and wine to be sold to go. Mixed drinks, however, were left out. 

At the time, State Senator Diana DiZoglio of the 1st Essex District pushed to get mixed drinks included in the beer and wine bill (which is set to expire when Governor Baker announces the end of the State of Emergency) but couldn’t get enough support.

“I think there was a lack of understanding for how these provisions would be implemented,” DiZoglio says of the delay in getting to-go cocktails passed.

Finally, on July 20, Governor Baker signed DiZoglio’s bill and restaurants could begin selling cocktails to go—but the House’s restaurant relief bill, which has provisions included to help stabilize rent and hold off tax payments, as well as a more comprehensive package intended to keep restaurants from folding entirely, has not made it to the Senate floor yet. 

In the early months of the pandemic, some restaurants sold takeout mixers, usually made from a combination of fresh fruit juices, with directions on how to add spirits so patrons could assemble their cocktails at home. The mixers did well for some restaurants that embraced it. Silas Axtell, bar manager at Worcester's Armsby Abbey, got tennis elbow from how much juicing he had to do. Each week, Axtell made four or five different mixes based around the restaurant's seasonal approach, while sticking to drinks people could easily make at home, like variations on the margarita, as well as fruit-focused cocktails; he released a lavender blueberry mix right before the restaurant decided to close for the summer. Now, when the Abbey reopens sometime this fall, Axtell will be able to combine what he’s learned making mixers and sell up to 64 ounces of pre-made cocktails in sealed containers—along with a food order. 

Bartenders across the state have gotten creative with their takeout drinks: Multiple restaurants have begun putting mixed cocktails into Capri Sun-style pouches. Spoke Wine Bar in Somerville has made instruction labels for their glass jars; others are using plastic cups with stickers to seal them. Drink in Fort Point has labeled plastic bottles for their mai tais, strawberry daiquiris and piña coladas. Orange Door Kitchen in West Acton sells mixed seasonal and classic cocktails built for two or four people with chilling and glassware suggestions, along with a choice of simple packaged snacks—this addition helps comply with the current food-must-be-served-with-drinks requirements for selling liquor to go.

It took months for the cocktails to go bill to pass, and that wait hampered restaurants. Some blame has been directed at the Massachusetts Package Store Association (MPSA). Liquor stores in the state and across the country have experienced record sales during the pandemic, and restaurants saw the package stores as an enemy, fighting to keep the hard liquor sales to themselves. But Rob Mellion, executive director and general counsel of the MPSA, who lobbied against the bill in the Senate, says that wasn’t the case. According to Mellion, he was fighting to-go sales from distillers. 

“Our view at the Massachusetts Package Store Association is more holistic. It is macro,” Mellion says. 

Boston’s hospitality landscape has already begun to look bleak without a restaurant assistance measure, which other states have already passed. Landmarks like Eastern Standard and The Hawthorne won’t be reopening unless something drastic happens. The Cantab Lounge, Bella Luna, Bergamot, Table at Season to Taste, Bar Boulud, Taranta and the Frogmore have all permanently shuttered, as well as Worcester’s Wexford House and the beloved Corner Grille. And that’s only the beginning. The independent restaurants that create the fabric of Massachusetts’ dining scene are teetering with little hope, and while cocktails to go are nice, they’re not lifesaving.

“This is something that could have helped more restaurants a few months ago, but it’s going to help less and less,” says Nick Korn. Korn is a longtime bartender in Boston who has worked at Eastern Standard and countless institutions in the city but now runs OffSite, an events/catering company and marketing group for bars and bartenders that also provides educational programs. 

“It is still a revenue stream,” he continues. “Basically, if you have liquor in your inventory and you can sell it, that is more money coming in. And restaurants, if they are making 5% profit in a good year, 10% in a crazy year, now if you're cutting 50% of occupancy, and you can’t sell liquor, and, and, and, there is no way the math lines up.”

Jackson Cannon—one of the city’s preeminent bar manager-owners and one of the driving forces behind educating state officials on the possibilities that cocktails to go presented—sees the push of to-go drinks not so much as a lifeline (which can only come in the form of rent freezes and rent assistance) but as a way to add more tax revenue to the state and give another person a job.

“These extra [drink] sales are pretty good margin sales for a bar or restaurant. It can be the difference between one more counter person at a small shop that was a lunch/dinner/after-work drink spot and is now a breakfast/lunch/dinner-to-go-with-a-pantry place that closes early,” Cannon says. “In many senses it adds a job in that place as much as it saves it.”

“It’s not going to make up for a bad landlord. It’s not going to make up for the period of forced closure,” Cannon continues. “The math hasn’t lined up. It’s been difficult, to say the least, especially for bars and nightclubs that rely on people coming in and having a good time or an experience.”

The changes do present some interesting possibilities going forward for Massachusetts, a state known for its strict liquor laws. Massachusetts hasn’t had Happy Hour since 1984, when Governor Michael S. Dukakis banned it. While some laws have been updated, like alcohol sales being permitted on Sundays and patrons being able to take home an unfinished bottle of wine from a restaurant, at times it can still seem like Massachusetts doesn’t want to change or pull away from its puritanical past. 

“The pandemic has shined a light on some of these laws that might be arbitrarily in place ... and warrant a better look moving forward,” Senator DiZoglio says. “But right now, we’re just focused on making sure we’re doing everything we can to make sure these restaurants recoup their losses.” 

Those losses can’t be made up in a few months; it’s going to take years. Restaurants don’t operate on quick turnaround. The overhead costs—food, alcohol, dinnerware, glasses, furniture, staffing and long-term leases—take time to pay off when margins are slim. People already don’t realize what it costs to make food in a restaurant nor understand the prices they’d need to pay for the owner to make a profit. Recouping losses is a long-term problem that to-go drinks won’t solve. But there can be changes made to existing laws that would help some struggling businesses and future ones, like fixing the state’s liquor licensing issues. 

Liquor licenses for restaurants, bars and clubs, or on-premise licenses, are still a big issue in the state. Each town, city and area has a set number of restrictive licenses tied to an address or a neighborhood. Then there are unrestricted licenses, which are worth more than any actual establishment because they’re permanent and they can be transferred and moved or sold. Korn believes these restrictive licensing laws need an overhaul and the pandemic is the perfect time; small restaurants with little initial capital, especially in underserved and minority communities, could use those unrestricted licenses to boost their sales and revenue, which in turn would keep them open longer. 

“If we take this opportunity right now, when restaurants desperately need money, that money is going to help our whole state and our whole community, ” Korn says. 

Cannon has thought a lot about what other changes could be possible, either temporary or permanent. And he doesn’t want only changes for restaurants. He believes the entire system needs an overhaul once the pandemic is over. “Why not have a bar in the back of a liquor store? Would society go wildly off the tracks if that is allowed? ” 

“It is about campaigning to keep [the cocktails to go provision] permanent. If we got a groundswell of normal folks really passionate about keeping it, there would be no stopping it, but if it remains as kind of a pet issue for bars, then it is going to be another war with the package [store] industry,” Cannon says. 

“Fight it out and maybe succeed, or not. I think the broader opportunity here is to review the very restrictive laws across the board and try to figure out what the original intentions were, and who is supporting them. It doesn’t take [effort for] somebody to support no change, but they do resist change for their own reasons.”