Park City-based Top Shelf Professional Bar Services has expanded its offerings to tackle one of the most challenging elements of events in Utah: permitting.
Specifically, single-event permits are required by the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services for any event that serves or sells alcohol. And in a town like Park City, that’s quite a few.
Casey Metzger, owner of Top Shelf, said in 18 years of business in the state, he’s seen people struggle to navigate those complicated legal waters.
“If anybody’s ever raised their hand, say, ‘Hey, I’ll take care of the catering at the gala, and I’ll get the bar service’ … (then) ‘Keep your hand up if you do it again.’ No one would keep their hand up. It’s that much of a pain in the butt,” he said.
Tanner Lennart is a Salt Lake City-based liquor lawyer. She said Utah is set up as a control state, with plenty of seemingly weird laws. Here, single-event alcohol permits are even required if alcohol is provided with the purchase of a ticket.
“In our state, we have what’s called an express language clause in … the alcohol code, that says if something’s not expressly allowed, then it’s forbidden,” she said. “Any time there is any sale of alcohol at all, even if it’s for a fundraiser, it has to be permitted through the state, and so that’s why it’s necessary, and it’s tightly regulated.”
Businesses in other states can obtain a traveling liquor license, Metzger said, and event organizers can just hire those teams to come in and sell alcohol. Utah doesn’t have those types of licenses.
The single-event process is complicated — despite resources the state provides to try and make it easier, like video walkthroughs — especially if someone hasn’t done it before, Metzger said. There are a lot of moving parts that must be done in a specific order, like needing an OK from the city before submitting the application with the state. He said going out of order can make the process more stressful and risk the applicant not getting approved in time.
“I’ve seen clients crying. I’ve seen clients driving from West Valley for background checks to Coalville to get a permit. And then all of a sudden they close the door … ‘You got to go back down to West Valley, and come back to Coalville Thursday because we’re not open on Tuesday,’” Metzger said. “Those are the things that we just know.”
With his industry knowledge, he’s learned all the right forms, all the right steps and how to cross every t and dot every i.
For a while, Metzger’s team helped people obtain those necessary permits as “good people with good hearts,” but with the growth of events, especially in the nonprofit sector, they saw an opportunity.
“The amount of fundraising going on in this town is incredible per capita,” he said. “It’s a whole lot different than it was in years past. That seems to be a thing around the state.”
Lennart agreed. In her 15 years working in Utah, she saw the request for single event permits go from a few hundred a year into the thousands as population and interest grows.
Metzger said when he started, the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services didn’t have a staff position to process permit requests.
Out of the 528 single-event permits already approved for this year by the state, Summit County has the second most at 132 events, under Salt Lake County’s 244 events.
It’s grown to the point where Top Shelf couldn’t spend time walking people through the process like they had before. So Metzger decided to add the service to his existing business.
“Nobody’s done this as a business. There’s a lot of people that will do it for others, but no one said, ‘Hey, we have a proven process and a system that keeps it efficient and that’s affordable and that gives people a peace of mind,’” he said.
Event Permitting Solutions, or EPS, is modeled after consulting services in other industries like development, Metzger said. In those cases, certain companies are designed entirely to help a builder work through government processes, timelines and approvals, acting as the liaison between the involved parties.
No other group had attempted the same in the alcoholic beverage industry, according to Metzger’s research.
Ginger Wicks, executive director of the Park City Area Restaurant Association, said Metzger’s service should prove useful in town.
“The single-event permitting process, while it is all online, it’s not intuitive, and so if you’re new to trying to pull a single-event permit, it can be very overwhelming,” Wicks said. “Having Casey manage all of that, since he has a clear understanding of the liquor laws and of the licensing process, could be a huge benefit for businesses.”
Especially for nonprofits, she said, who may already be stretched thin. And for events that she manages with the restaurant association, permitting is always an extra hoop members have to jump through. Take Savor the Summit, held annually in June, where restaurants set up for a dinner party on Main Street.
“Because each individual restaurant is serving their own alcohol, each individual restaurant is required to pull their own individual UDABS permit,” Wicks said. “They cannot just move into the street. They have to get permitted by the UDABS to do that.”
Lennart said, as someone who solely works with businesses selling alcohol full time, it’s great to have a business that can help with the single-event part. Especially because of the legal repercussions for getting it wrong.
“The biggest issue is the timing. If you don’t get these permits in on time, which means in on time and correctly, that can mean not being able to sell alcohol at your event. Which … can be a major loss of fundraising,” she said. “Then, if people go ahead and try to do it anyway, that’s illegal.”
Repercussions for selling alcohol without permits can range from civil consequences, like banning a person or group from obtaining a future permit, to criminal or misdemeanor charges, she said, depending on how the state chooses to proceed.
Now, Top Shelf has someone solely trained and dedicated to the process, with three approaches: light guidance, more hands-on or full service.
“It’s great that the state and the city allow people to go out and do this, but … they put a lot of liability on people that don’t necessarily understand the magnitude of what that looks like,” Metzger said. “(By) understanding the good questions to ask, and how to put the initial permits through the local municipalities together … you can get that approval before you get the state approval.”
Top Shelf’s main service is in bartending, which Metzger said is ultimately the best way to round out the experience.
“It’s like doing a bar at a regular place on Main Street, but you’re busier than the bar’s ever going to be. When’s the last time you went to a bar with 300 people all in there drinking at the same time?” he said.
There’s a safety element to serving alcohol, and having a professional service helps ensure that safety, he said.
“Even if you are successful in getting the permit, there’s still so many rules and regulations that you have to follow, which can be difficult, again, if your primary business isn’t in selling alcohol,” Lennart said.
“We’re experts at that,” Metzger said, “and we guide people the right way so that when people have these events, they don’t have to risk it being shut down. They don’t have to risk … a violation from the state.”
For details on the new Event Permitting Solutions arm of Top Shelf, visit topshelfutah.com/eps.