Great Dane can now sell their own beer

Starting last week, the Great Dane Pub and Brewing Company started selling their own brand of beer at its Hilldale restaurant in Madison.

The brew pub opened its third Madison location last year, but was unable to sell its own beer there because of a law dating back to the 1930’s that prevented them from selling at more than 2 locations. So Great Dane had been selling their competitors' beer, and their brew kettles at the Hilldale location remained dry.

A provision in the new Wisconsin state budget now allows to brewpubs to sell their own beer at up to six locations without using a distributor. They can also to brew up to 10,000 barrels of beer per year, an increase from the 4,000-barrel limit under previous laws.

But the beer distributors successfully lobbied to add restrictions to the provision that prevent breweries from making both a lot of beer and serving food. So brew pubs that are successful in making beer (so they eventually reach that 10,000 limit) have to stop serving food. And successful breweries can’t open a restaurant at their site or at another location.

So who would think that’s a good idea – telling a brewery that they can’t open a restaurant? The beer distributors do. They don’t want places serving their own beer. They want their money, so they want to distribute all the beer. But since beer at a brewery doesn't need to be distributed, they made it illegal instead.

This limits business unfairly, and is a stupid law. What started out as a good idea (allowing Great Dane to serve their own beer – a no brainer) turned ugly once the distributors got their hands on it.

I’m not aware of any businesses that effected so far – supposedly all breweries operating before the law went into effect have been grandfathered in and are still allowed to sell food. But any new breweries won’t be able to sell food. We'll see how it works out.