August 5th, 2011
Who’s in charge?
I’ll give you a hint, it isn’t Charles.
During the course of my adventures in brewery opening I’ve been asked many questions about dealing with the government and the various agencies that may or may not regulate the business of brewing, distributing and selling beer. I hope that this will shed a little light on how the process works and give you some insight into our progress. This has become especially interesting over the last couple of weeks, due to licensing issues in Massachusetts.
One caveat, I am NOT a lawyer and many of these issues can vary from state to state and even within different local jurisdictions.
TTB – This stands for the Alcohol Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, aka the ATF. The alcohol and tobacco part of their name isn’t that important, it’s the other two “t’s” that really matter. This is the federal agency that regulates the production and import and export of alcoholic beverages, amongst other things. As a brewery you must submit a “Brewer’s Notice” which then gives you the right to pay excise taxes to the federal government and to sell beer. In that order. We should be receiving our approval from the TTB shortly, as we just had a phone interview with them recently.
FDA – The FDA really doesn’t have much to do with the brewing business, except for the fact that we must register with them as part of a bio-terrorism act that came out around the time of the Patriot Act. This applies to any location that produces food or beverages. Registration with the FDA was surprisingly easy and painless.
ABCC – In Massachusetts we have the ABCC (Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission) that regulates the production and distribution of alcohol within the state. We would love to submit our application for a license to the ABCC, but due to some recent developments, we will have to wait. I’ll address this issue in greater detail in a future entry. (We submitted our federal paperwork on March 14, for those of you keeping score at home.) The ABCC also deals with liquor licensing, which is a separate issue and applies to retailers or establishments who want to sell alcohol to consumers.
Local Agencies – Depending on where you are located, this could end up being a whole host of different departments. Here’s a quick list:
– Building Inspector
– Health Department
– Water Department
– Environmental Management
– City Council
You get the idea. We were fortunate to have excellent local support which helped with a lot of these issues.
Next time I will give you a sketch of what a typical timeline might look like for this whole process!