Liquor has to be purchased from retail locations and cannot be distributed directly to restaurants themselves.
“We watch the state trucks deliver to the convenience store and to the pharmacy and to the grocery store but they won’t come and deliver to a restaurant or bar,” said Jessica Dunker, president of the Iowa Restaurant Association.
“Products such as our Kinky Green that we put in our house cocktail the Roughrider, we can’t get that from our supplier that sells it, but it’s sitting on the shelves here at our local liquor stores,” Avila-Burillo of Chophouse Downtown said.
The group plans to introduce new legislation for consideration next session. They’re pushing to make beer and liquor distribution to restaurants the same as wine, which can be delivered through a distributor, or purchased at a store in limited quantities.
“When Prohibition was lifted in 1933 there was– there were restaurants and bars, there were not drug stores and gas stations and grocery stores selling the array of alcohol products that they are now,” Dunker explained.