Effective July 1, 2023, liquor-by-the-drink license holders – aka LBD – can choose their license expiration date. This allows restaurants, bars, hotels and other LBD license holders with multiple licenses to set one or more times during the year for ABC liquor license renewals.
If you hold two or more LBD licenses in Tennessee, aligning renewals is well worth considering. For example, you can choose to renew all your licenses at one time per year. Even if you only hold two licenses, like restaurant and catering, you can renew both at the same time each year.
Imagine only having to scramble around once a year for tax clearance or to update your bond amount?
As a bonus, aligning licenses does not cost a cent. The license fee is prorated from the original expiration date to the new expiration date. You do not get penalized by paying the full license fee for partial license years.
There are multiple options for license alignment:
- All licenses renew on the same date;
- Licenses renew six months apart – half on one date and half six months later;
- Licenses renew quarterly; or
- Licenses renew once a month.
For inexplicable reasons, we hear the XTC lyrics:
Dear God, hope you get the letter, and-
I pray you can make it better down here
I don't mean a big reduction in the price of beer
How to align licenses in RLPS?
If you are mumbling to yourself, “what the heck is RLPS,” you can stop reading now. These are instructions for licensing experts. The image below shows the updated fields in the RLPS when renewing a license:
If you answer “yes” to the question about whether you want to choose your expiration date, the renewal will not generate a fee at the end of the renewal application. A reviewer at the Alcoholic Beverage Commission will grab the renewal and reach out to confirm that you meant to answer yes to the question. If you meant to answer “yes,” you confirm with the reviewer, and voila: the reviewer will assess a prorated license fee amount for each license. Once you pay the fee and the renewal is approved, your licenses will be generated with the new expiration date.
This applies to all LBD licenses. It does not apply to grocery, retail liquor store and other ABC liquor licenses.
A special thanks to paralegal extraordinaire Beth Frasch and the experts at the Tennessee ABC for working out this process.