As you know if you’ve visited a Jersey brewery, tours are required before consumption on site and there are other laws that should be modified. Here’s where you come in. We, the beer drinking public, breweries and brewpubs, etc, need your help.
Send this email to ALL these listed here and change the INFORMATION HIGHLIGHTED to your personal information by TODAY, Thursday, June 15 at 2PM.
asmgusciora@njleg.org, aswtucker@njleg.org, asmrumpf@njleg.org, asmchrisabrown@njleg.org, asmwimberly@njleg.org.
Dear Chairman Gusciora and Members of the Regulatory Oversight Committee,
I am writing you today as a New Jersey based VOTER, CRAFT BEER CONSUMER, HOMEBREWER, FOUNDER & PRESIDENT OF New Jersey Craft Beer, ETC to express my support for A-4602 (Lampitt/Singleton/DeAngelo), which removes the requirement that limited licensed breweries provide tours for consumers and permits certain food consumption on premise, and ask that you please vote in favor of it on Monday June 19th.
The intent of this legislation is to afford New Jersey breweries a meaningful level of parity with other in-state craft alcohol producers, as well as craft breweries nationwide, in the areas of food availability and tour requirements. This puts New Jersey at a competitive disadvantage to our neighboring states. While many breweries may still offer a voluntary tour to their customers if this bill is passed, I believe that mandatory tour requirements are not workable, especially when beer production and packaging is often taking place in close quarters.
Regarding the issue of food and snacks at a brewery, most states explicitly allow the sale or free offering of food, with some, like Pennsylvania, requiring food be available at a brewery if beer is being sold for on premise consumption. In New Jersey, both classes of winery license, plenary winery and farm winery, have no tour requirement and have no prohibition regarding the sale or free offering of any types of food, including light snacks, and allow restaurants to be operated on a winery’s licensed premise. Also, bi-partisan legislation recently signed into law in May 2017 (A-3351 / S-2570, PL 2017, c. 80) creating a state license to manufacture mead and hard cider, contains no tour requirement and allows for the sale and/or gratuitous offering of “light snacks”. A-4602 mirrors the provisions of this new mead and hard cider license.Thank you for allowing me to express my support for A-4602, and for your consideration of my request to post the legislation for a vote in your committee this month.
Respectfully,
YOUR NAME AND CITY/TOWN, NJ.