What are the laws regarding serving complimentary alcoholic beverages?

Jennifer: What are the laws regarding serving complimentary alcoholic beverages?
I am looking into serving complimentary alcoholic beverages in my local business. I do not have my bar card or a liquor license. These beverages will be served during special events only and will contain less than 5 oz of alcohol. Does anyone know the state and local laws for doing this?

Answers and Views:

Answer by Corvato
laws like this vary GREATLY depending on location

check with your local liquor commision (ABC) and ask.

Answer by Robert
The one point that is universal will be that you’ll have use trusted employees for this and make certain that they card anyone who doesn’t appear to be over 21 years of age. If you don’t take the time to do this, then your promotion will almost certainly come to a swift end in a big legal fight.

After that, then the laws regarding alcohol service vary greatly from municipality to municipality. You’ll definitely have to check with your local alcohol board. You should also check ALL state, county, and local regulations regarding alcohol service. There are often other restrictions in alcohol service that will come into play. For example, in Illinois, Sunday package liquor sales are allowed, but some individual towns and cities have regulations either banning Sunday sales entirely or restricting them to after a certain time on Sunday. Although most laws on the books deal with alcohol sales, the general point is to check all applicable laws because most will likely cover free alcohol as well.

After you’ve secured your legal position, make certain that your private business’s promotion model is set and that you have a comprehensive system in place, as alcohol can be expensive to purchase, and free alcohol promotions can quickly get out of hand and expensive, among other things. You should definitely set time restrictions on your promotions, as well as other rules for your employees and customers to follow, lest your promotion end up getting out of hand and costing you a lot of money and problems. It probably wouldn’t hurt to do some research into retail bar and restaurant liquor service to see what you are getting into and what you have to plan for. Insurance liability issues, possible customer problems, and portion control are all things that retail liquor establishments have to consider, and you’ll be protecting yourself more if you learn from their examples first even though you’re technically not in the professional liquor business.