re: Courtyard Brewery's taproom plan clears New Orleans City Council

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Maybe they could start up a food truck and park it out front? Not sure if that'd be kosher.

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Have seen where some brewpubs rotate food trucks every night. Not sure if they get a cut, or if the trucks bring business and vice versa.

Their guest taps provide the best chance to make money early on. But that's hardly a sustainable business on that level.

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How does that work with the guest taps ? Does it have to go through a distributor ?

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I think so, I know it does here in STL. There is a taproom here that I frequent. They have 4 of their own beers and maybe about 10 guest taps right now, and they get their guest taps from the local distributors.

Guest taps seem like it would cause tension getting the specialty beers they want from distributors.

SO I think a brewery can sell up to 10% of their inventory direct from their brewery to the consumer. This is a state ATC rule rather than a city of New Orleans regulation.

Courtyard has been battling with the City for a zoning or land use issue in order to get approval to open a brewery/taproom.

I am not familiary with the particular law that would allow a brewery to sell another brewery's beer onsite, but one would think that would not be illegal. This is because in general the state prefers non-exclusivity in retail outlets.

Sorry I forgot to get back to this.

There are two different license options for a brewery to operate under. The first is what almost all (other than Old Rail and Crescent City) breweries in LA have, which is a production brewery license. Under that license breweries are allowed to apply for a retail permit in a separate space that gives them the ability to sell up to 10% of their product directly to the public. So a tap room. At the moment those tap rooms cannot sell other products, which is an issue for some of the breweries as wives (or non-beer drinkers) are not willing to hang out in the bar with their beer drinking companion for more than 1 drink. So the breweries are trying to get wine/other alcohol added to their retail permits to entice people to stick around. Under this license the other 90% of product has to be sent through a distributor, no matter where it goes from there.

The other type of license is what Old Rail and CC have and what Courtyard wants. A brewpub (terrible name) license is basically a retail/bar license that allows for production. These breweries are not allowed to distribute their beer but only allowed onsite sales. Under the bar/retail aspect of their license they are allowed to sell whatever product they want as long as it comes from either their facility or from a distributor. So if Old Rail wanted to have a Chafunkta beer on tap (for some reason) they would have to get that keg from Chafunkta's distributor.

Also as an aside, brewpubs can donate their beer to any festival or non-profit unlike production breweries due to the brewpub paying the retail taxes on the product. Whereas since breweries and distributors have not paid the retail taxes they cannot donate as of this moment. The bill looking to change this has left the House and is waiting on the Senate to approve it.

I think that is pretty comprehensive. Hope it helps.

Frat-tastic is correct. And with any manufacturing operation, federal, state, and local licenses/permits are required. Additionally, City of New Orleans zoning regulations under the "old" CZO (new CZO has been proposed but not adopted) restrict where these operations can occur and require a kissing of the ring / conditional use to operate. It's about to get worse with the new CZO, under which the business will also have to be blessed by the relevant neighborhood organization to get approval. Look for a lot of newfound wealth for the neighborhood orgs once the "donation" process starts.

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Going forward with another city approval

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Good lord!

It doesn't seem like a big issue. Just a final planning commision approval and they appear to have been working with the neighbors very well so far on the project.
Here is the article. LINK

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Maybe they could start up a food truck and park it out front?

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This works very well in Portland. There are several breweries/taprooms that do this. Basically, the food truck owner pays rent to park his food truck on a semi-permanent basis on the brewery property.