To-go alchohol sales extended to 2023 in Wicomico County

Salisbury, Maryland-  The Wicomico County Board of License Commissioners has renewed to- go alcohol sales.

The measure would have expired on July 1st with Governor Larry Hogans removal of the State of Emergency ordinance due to covid-19.

The take-out service would require a meal to be purchased with the beverage, deliveries of no later than 11pm and a delivery driver from the restaurant itself to be honored.

The take-out model had come to be a cornerstone of restuarants pivoting to preserve profits during the high of the pandemic, and remains a popular option.

“To go food and beverage has been a hot item for restaurants,” said President of the Salisbury Chamber of Commerce Bill Chambers.

Restaurants in Wicomico county have been generating an average of 8 and 25 percent of their business through the model according to chambers, including one Salisbury restuarant that had been generating 4,000 dollars of profit a week in to-go alchohol sales.

Evo Brewery Owner John Knorr says those sales are helping his place come back.

“We are fully reopened now which is a great thing, but we have a tremendous hole as an industry, in the US  and here in the county to dig out of so the renewal is a great thing for us,” Knorr said.

Knorr says Evo Brewery and his other restuarants, have seen a record amount of takeout orders, far exceeding the amount he had pre-pandemic, a trend that he attributes to the to-go alchohol model.

“We are seeing sustained take out orders across the board in our restaurants across wicomico county ,people are taking food home and now they can take their beverages home with them too,” he said.

Chambers says he is grateful to the Board of Licenece Commissioners for extending the to-go sales into june of 2023 which he believes will help restuarants that survived the high of covid lockdowns and capcity limits find their footing moving forward.

“The industry won’t be the way it was it’s changed,we’ve lost businesses, and they are not coming back but the ones that survived still need these lifelines to crawl out of the hole the pandemic caused,” he said.

Chambers believes the best life-line for businesses would be to permanently allow the sale of to-go beverages, a measure that 13 other states have already enacted.

A state wide measure would help restuarants in neighboring Worcester county, which didn’t receive an extension from their liqour board.

Knorr hopes Worcester County bars and restaurants get their to-go orders restored soon.

He sees it as a way for everyone to benefeit, including the liqour boards.

“It works for everyone the liqour board sells more to the restuarants they make more, we get more profit so we can hire more or upgrade our space to sit more people, it just makes sense,” he said.