New Jersey Cracks Down on Breweries for Hosting Trivia Nights, Serving FoodRegulations ban food sales, limit the number of events, and include other inane requirements.
C. JARRETT DIETERLE
7.12.2022
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, New Jersey refused to allow breweries to deliver their brews to people's houses, even though taprooms were forced to close on account of stay-at-home orders. Now, state regulators are primed to deliver the coup de grâce in their anti-beer campaign.
On July 1, the state's Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) finally implemented its long-delayed, long-dreaded "special ruling" on craft breweries. First proposed in 2018, the rules caused an immediate firestorm in the local brewing community and were temporarily withdrawn. Re-introduced in 2019, the rules were scheduled to go into effect in 2020 but were suspended when COVID-19 hit.
The rules themselves are almost beyond parody. The headline restriction is that breweries will be limited to hosting a mere 25 on-premise "special events" per calendar year. What constitutes a special event? Pretty much anything you can imagine, so long as it's advertised and promoted, including beer yoga classes, trivia nights, or even a brewery deciding to broadcast a championship sporting event on its TVs.
If an event is not promoted or advertised, it apparently does not count against the 25-event cap, although it's unclear why a brewery would bother hosting weekly trivia if it can't tell its customer base when to show up.
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Source:
https://reason.com/2022/07/12/new-jersey-cracks-down-on-breweries-for-hosting-trivia-nights-serving-food/
