Georgia may be ahead of South Carolina in a lot of ways, but not when it comes to beer.
South Carolina lawmakers are moving toward allowing breweries to serve up to four pints of beer on site. But Georgia is struggling at a more basic level: Legalizing the sale of beer to be consumed off the premises. The practice is already permitted in S.C., which lets breweries sell customers 288 ounces to take elsewhere.
“We’re very interested in what South Carolina’s brewing industry has accomplished,” said Nancy Palmer, vice president of development for the Georgia Craft Brewers Guild.
“There are ways in which we can emulate it sometimes and beat it out other times.”
She said the organization may push for on-premise pint sales if the members of the Guild call for it.
“Clearly there’s some liability, insurance, tax issues, if all of a sudden you allow people to drink on premise,” said Palmer, who lives in Athens. “It may be the kind of thing some brewers may not be as interested in. But maybe one day we’ll go where South Carolina is going, or we might go in another direction.”
She said advocates are intensely focused on first freeing up breweries to sell beer to consumers to drink off site.
The bills to do so, H. 314 and S. 174, fell short before Georgia’s Crossover Day, the deadline for legislation to clear one chamber in order to have a chance of becoming law.
“Our aim is to let the dust settle, to get together outside of the capital and work with some other stakeholders,” said John Pinkerton, president of the Guild. There had been some concern that the change would alter the three-tier system of producers, distributors and retailers.
Pinkerton’s Moon River Brewing Co. in Savannah is a brewpub, which is permitted to serve its beer on site.
Meanwhile, in South Carolina, Jaime Tenny, president of the S.C. Brewers Association and owner of COAST Brewing Co. in Charleston, S.C., said the “pint bill” pending in the S.C. Legislature would allow the state’s growing brewery community thrive. South Carolina’s proposal, H. 3554, is expected to pass the full S.C. House, and a companion bill, S. 423, has been introduced in the S.C. Senate.
“They could still do the sample, but then say, ‘oh, I really like that. Let me have a whole pint of that,’” said Tenny.
“Having the ability to sell pints really helps with cash flow,” she said. “Anything I can sell on site for profit I can put back into my business and expand.”
A report from the National Beer Wholesalers Association on the industry’s commercial boost lays the beer industry out in terms of public benefits.
In South Carolina, taxes by beer distributors were enough to fund 5.4 million teacher hours or to maintain 8,003 miles of highways for a year. In Georgia, taxes equated to 10.6 million teacher hours or maintenance of 14,816 miles of highways.
Distributors are considered one tier of the three-tier system, where they take beer from brewers or importers and sell it to retailers. The report linked the success of small brewers to distributors, stating that many small operations wouldn’t be be able to sell the volumes of beer that they do without them.
Tenny, Pinkerton and Palmer emphasized that the breweries are small businesses whose employees represent active citizens and entrepreneurs.
Pinkerton pointed to the Guild’s logo, a rubber boot worn by brewers.
“The boot for us is an important symbol,” he said. “We are working people. Most of the business owners that are represented in this trade organization are the people who still make the beer. We’re not fat cat corporations.”
There are 12 breweries in South Carolina and roughly twice as many in Georgia, while North Carolina has more than 60. “Compared to North Carolina, oh my gosh, we’re light years behind what they’re doing there,” said Tenny.