How new S.C. liquor laws are impacting local businesses
- SCCLR Newsletter
- Feb 23
- 3 min read
By: Mercedes Dubberly
New liquor liability insurance policy mandates and liquor liability reforms took effect statewide Jan. 1, marking a change for those in the food and beverage industry.
Following the new law, a few locals sat down with ColaDaily to share their thoughts on the updated legislation.
Phil Blair, owner of WECO Bottle and Biergarten had followed the bill closely, and shared his frustration as someone impacted by it. “They’ve added requirements, increased penalties for noncompliance and raised the cost of doing business. This bill doesn’t provide businesses with rebates on their insurance, so it's been completely ineffective on what it was supposed to be curtailing,” Blair said.
According to Blair, the reason given for the new mandates was relief for liquor liability. “It’s basically called a liquor liability crisis. That's what they’ve [legislators] deemed it the last several years.”
Blair has experienced this “crisis,” and while he knows it’s very real, he doesn’t think these particular reforms are the way to go about it. In fact, South Carolina is the first state to enforce such strict liquor liability laws, with the new legislation requiring establishments to have $1 million in liquor liability insurance if they serve alcohol after 5 p.m.
This is in part because of the aforementioned crisis. Due to an increase in drunk driving lawsuits, many insurance companies were sued out of business and had to leave the state, accounting for a gap in the coverage available for establishments that serve alcohol.
Blair explained that, while it’s important to have insurance, this is an extreme. Previously, the minimum to meet for the insurance policy was affordable, but legislation has made it much higher. “I've talked to businesses in Charlotte who do probably 10 times the sales we do, and their insurance is pennies on the dollar what we pay. My business partner has a restaurant in Asheville that does three times the amount of business that we do. They pay roughly 10% of what we pay for insurance,” he said.
Another new mandate added by the liquor liability reforms is completion of a SCDOR-approved training program by all servers and managers overseeing alcohol service. There is a March 2 deadline for course completion, and after that, a $2,500 fine for not having a physical copy of your server’s license, which must be South Carolina specific and registered with the South Carolina Department of Revenue.
“We got a literal bill for the bill,” Blair quipped.
But what is this class actually teaching those who are handling alcohol?
Blair, who has been working in the food and beverage industry and serving alcohol for over 20 years, described the course as primarily being made up of “common sense” knowledge.
Blair took the servingalcohol.com course, a popular course to get certified to serve alcohol, and one that is SCDOR-approved.
Danielle Robinson, a salesperson for Mission Grape, as well as a local wine instructor and bartender, echoed his sentiment saying, “A lot of it has no application in the day-to-day service of alcohol. We can tell when we’re supposed to stop serving someone for their safety. But the course wasn’t about that, it was kind of all over the place and had a lot of facts and figures that had to be memorized rather than understood.”
Robinson took the course from Servsafe, another SCDOR-approved option.
The liquor laws will require restaurants to have their entire staff, not just owners or representatives, certified individually if they serve alcohol after 5 p.m. and average 10 or more hours per week. According to Blair, this may be hurting some local businesses financially
“For me, because I have a small staff, I have almost zero turnover. I can get my 10 person staff certified and jump through the hoops. It's an annoyance, but it's something I can do.
However, I'm thinking about the bigger groups like Bourbon, Black Rooster and Dragon Room. When you have a larger staff like they do, your cost goes up, and the effort and time it takes to organize all this training goes up,” he said.
But Blair doesn’t want to cry about it, he wants to take action. “Contact your legislator, whoever your local representative is, and tell your friends to vote. I think it would be fantastic to stay engaged,” he said.
“These local places that are in jeopardy are energetic places, they’re welcoming to people — real people — and are a relief from their daily stress. So if you take this away, what do we have?” Robinson concluded.
