RI restaurants can serve mixed drinks with takeout orders starting Saturday
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WLNE) – As Rhode Island moves into Phase 1 of reopening the economy, restaurants are still limited to takeout and delivery orders, but now they’ve been given the green light from Governor Gina Raimondo to sell mixed drinks with to-go orders starting Saturday.
“Some people don’t want to go to a restaurant and then go to a liquor store so I feel like it will help us.”
Ryan Bessette owns Rogue Island Local Kitchen & Bar located in The Arcade in Providence.
When restaurants were forced to stop dine-in service and move to takeout and delivery in mid-March, Bessette shut his business down and laid off over two dozen employees.
“Take out food’s great, but, I mean, we weren’t a takeout restaurant when we closed. We were more of a dine-in, patio, brunch type of restaurant.”
Rogue Island reopened on April 8 for takeout, but customers were asking for the spot’s specialty beers.
“Being a craft beer restaurant, I think we got hit a little harder. For us it’s 35% of our sales roughly is a draft beer so that’s 1/3 of our business that we’ve lost since closing,” said Bessette.
He started reaching out to Lieutenant Governor Dan McKee, advocating for restaurants to be allowed to not only start serving mixed drinks but also draft beer. Bessette said selling cans of beer had him spending more money.
“Being mostly draft, we had to go out and purchase more cans. So all that did was add more money to what we had to bring in every week, when we were sitting on probably $10,000 worth of draft beer that we could sell from day one.”
Staring this weekend, Rogue Island will be selling mixed drink kits along with cocktails and growlers of craft beer.
“They will be served in 32 ounce growlers, sanitized and then taped on the top, labeled properly according to the Governor’s requirements.”
Bessette hopes it helps rake in some much-needed revenue and is grateful that none of his product has gone bad.
“I wish it happened day one, but I think it came at the right time where we can still sell some of this beer and try to bring in tax dollars on product that we already paid for.”
Later in Phase 1, the governor hopes to make outdoor seating a possibility for restaurants. More details are expected next week.
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