Gov. Beshear is letting restaurants deliver alcohol. Here’s what that actually means.
Gov. Andy Beshear announced Thursday he would soon start allowing restaurants and bars to deliver alcohol during the coronavirus pandemic, prompting jubilant cries of “hallelujah” and “thank God” from Twitter users following along with his daily update.
A draft of Beshear’s order says the move is necessary to “diminish the economic impact to restaurants and bars” after Beshear ordered that bars and restaurants close to in-person traffic for the foreseeable future.
“In the short term I think its very helpful,” said Matt Jones, who is co-owner of KSBar and Grill. “It will provide a lifeline to some places.”
The order does have limitations. Bars and restaurants will not be able to sell “to-go cups,” meaning the alcohol will have to come in a closed and sealed original container. That likely means that you won’t be able to get Distilled’s vanilla old fashioned delivered to your door, but you’d still be able to get a beer.
The order also says that the alcohol must be incidental to the purchase of the meal — no bulk orders — which rules out buying a stockpile of bourbon to last however long it takes before things get back to normal.
Jones said the order is crucial for many bars and restaurants because much of their profit margin comes from the sale of alcohol.
“In the restaurant business, unless you’re serving high end food, many restaurants make their profit margin on alcohol,” Jones said. “Unless you’re getting massive crowds, alcohol is an important aspect to making a profit and no one is getting massive crowds right now.”
But the order is likely to only give a small lifeline to restaurants and bars, which typically operate on razor-thin margins. On Wednesday, the National Restaurant Association asked the federal government for $455 billion federal aid package and said food service establishments could lose as many as 7 million jobs.
Jones said the length of the response to the virus will largely dictate how many of Lexington’s bars and restaurants will survive.
“If this goes two months, three months, it’s going to be hard for anyone to survive,” Jones said.
Here’s a copy of the order.
This story was originally published March 20, 2020 at 2:42 PM.
