BOISE, Idaho — Early days of January might be spent reminiscing about the holidays that were. The food, the fun, the family, maybe some alcoholic drinks.
Oh yes, the drinks portion of the holiday season certainly gives the Idaho State Police division for Alcohol Beverage Control plenty to work on. ISP Captain Rocky Gripton said there is now major attention on illegal mobile bars.
“This is a problem in Idaho. We don't have a license just for mobile catering, and so essentially, licensees have allowed these mobile catering businesses to essentially use their license,” Gripton said.
Under Idaho law, there are very specific rules on who can go mobile to sell beer, wine and liquor at events.
“That requires essentially a brick-and-mortar establishment with an address that's properly zoned to conduct that type of business,” Gripton said.
Businesses that have a liquor license still need to get county and city permits to serve at an event – they can’t just set up shop and start selling out of a trailer. Additionally, those licenses are not sharable, businesses can’t lease out their liquor licenses to other entities.
“A lot of the times they may be receiving payment on the back end for allowing somebody else the use of that license,” Gripton said.
Customers can simply be told, 'yeah we have a license,' even being shown what looks like legit paperwork. This leads people to think that's all there is to it.
“You're probably not going to know because a lot of these companies are holding themselves out on the internet," Gripton said. "There's a valid company going as far as stating that they're properly licensed and insured, when at the end of the day they're not."
This isn’t a hypothetical either – Idaho State Police sees illegal mobile bars popping up around the state. In fact, they made an arrest back in November 2023.
“It was one of those scenarios when they didn't have a license whatsoever, not even a catering permit," Gripton said. "They made it in an attempt to obtaining a catering permit, but were denied because, you know, they weren't a licensee."
To be clear, these are not new laws.
“As far as I know – since Prohibition in the 1930s – it's a felony that's punishable, I believe up to a $5,000 fine or five years in prison,” Gripton said. “This has probably been going on for a long enough period that they became accustomed to it and we've more been alerted to it. We're trying to do everything we can to provide education. We're reaching out, but we still have those cases where people are going to do it anyway.”
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