The process was so confusing and opaque that an assistant manager at the bar wound up accidentally taking the test for another state instead, he said. Lee said he felt the training and testing requirement was “expensive for a whole lot of BS.” Some beverage proprietors aren’t shy about expressing their feelings on the new certification.Įugene Lee, bar manager of Big Bar & Alcove in Los Feliz, began looking into programs this week. “But now that it’s crunchtime, it’s going smoother, though we still have a lot of people who have a lot of questions.” “In the beginning it was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I don’t understand,’” Brown said.
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The trainings range in price: Online courses could be $6 to $40 per person, while group in-person sessions might be more expensive.Ĭomedy Seller Server, one of the certified third-party training providers, has been bombarded with questions about which employees need to receive the training and how to navigate the state’s portal, said Victoria Brown, operations manager at the Fort Worth company. Six more Spanish-language programs and one Chinese-language program are awaiting approval, Carr said. Jolly himself is one of the upstarts, having come out of retirement to launch a training company, Jerry R Jolly & Associates, prompted by the passage of the law.Ĭalifornia’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Department has certified 45 third-party training providers so far, with at least three offering the training in Spanish. Using private companies for health and safety certifications is not unusual in the food industry, but AB 1221 has created a cottage industry of new companies specifically providing the California training, while pushing bigger national services to expand in the state as well. After completing the training, workers have 30 days and three attempts to pass the exam with a 70% or better score - otherwise they must restart the process.
Then restaurants - or the workers themselves - must pay a third-party company for online or in-person training. The model works like this: Workers must first register with the Alcoholic Beverage Control Department and pay a $3 fee to receive a nine-digit ID for use in training and testing. Still, the majority of affected bars and restaurants “don’t even know this law exists yet,” said Jerry Jolly, a 31-year veteran of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Department who served as its director before retiring in 2006.Īnd California’s certification process is less streamlined than in some other states that mandate similar training.
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Its author, former Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), pushed for state-mandated “responsible beverage service training” in the aftermath of a car crash allegedly caused by a drunk driver that killed two UC San Diego medical students and seriously injured three others.Įnactment of the law was delayed during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic to ease the process for restaurants and bars already battered by revenue losses and closures. Though the law was approved in 2017, few businesses are aware of it.
The law defines an “alcohol server” as anyone responsible for checking identifications, taking customer orders and pouring or delivering alcoholic beverages. Southern California hosts a large chunk of those businesses that will be required to adopt the training - 10,605 in Los Angeles County alone, Carr said. Any workers hired after that date will have 60 days to complete the certification.ĪB 1221 affects some 56,000 establishments in California that are licensed for customers to buy and consume alcohol on site.
31 - the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control will require that alcohol servers be properly certified. The law goes into effect July 1, and 60 days after - by Aug.
Workers must then pass a two-hour open-book exam.īusinesses are scrambling to understand the scope of the law and the process for certification as the deadline approaches. There’s worry from some in the industry about a lack of awareness of the law and the added burden it may bring to a sector deeply affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.Īssembly Bill 1221, or the Responsible Beverage Service Training Act, will require bartenders, waitstaff and their managers at establishments licensed to serve alcohol to undergo a three- to four-hour training on how alcohol affects the body, the consequences of over-serving, basic laws regulating alcohol and intervention techniques for dealing with inebriated customers. So far, just 33,000 people have become certified, a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of workers employed by not only bars and restaurants but also wineries, breweries, distilleries, brewpubs, event centers and stadiums - essentially any place of business where you can drink. By the end of summer, every bar and restaurant employee who serves alcohol in California must obtain a new certification.
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