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Ordinance first reading 6/0
The Clerk has received some questions from local businesses about whether they could provide alcoholic storage and allow consumption of those alcoholic beverages in their businesses without a liquor license. This sort of business is known as a bottle club and is specifically regulated in other States, but is not directly mentioned in the Wyoming liquor statutes. It appears that the very broad definition of Sale in the Wyoming Statutes may prohibit this sort of business unless it is conducted in an establishment that is operated under the authority of a liquor license. To address this ambiguity, Casper has enacted an ordinance to regulate this practice, which defines a bottle club and allows them to be operated only as part of a business conducted with a liquor license. The advantage of this approach is that it establishes clarity about whether a bottle club can be operated independently of a liquor license. The danger posed by bottle clubs operated without a liquor license is the difficulty of ensuring that they follow all the same regulations concerning sales to minors, over serving adults, cooperation with the police, hours of operation and other safety standards that the City Council has enacted for the protection of the citizenry.
The Casper ordinance allows bottle club type services in an establishment with any sort of liquor license and that same language is in the ordinance that has been prepared for Council's consideration. We don't know whether any current license holders of any sort of liquor license would want to offer this service, but as this ordinance is written, it could be an option for any sort of liquor license. Some examples come to mind of businesses that might want to attract customers who would want to consume types of beverages not generally stocked by that business. A restaurant with a restaurant license might want to offer this service to attract customers who might want to drink particularly rare bottles of wine that the business might not want to stock generally and store them at the restaurant, for example. That same option might be attractive for clubs as well.
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