Heads up for King County WA tasting rooms

[Brandjes]

In case you didn't already know - King County (WA) is ending the tasting room exemption program as of April 2016. This means if you have been operating your tasting room without a health permit under an exemption, you will now need to apply for a health department license. I just found out and was a bit surprised so I thought I would share.

http://www.kingcounty.gov/healthservices/health/ehs/foodsafety/FoodBusiness/beverage.aspx

[imperialipa]

Are some tasting rooms totally exempt from the Food Code?


Possibly. Tasting rooms that limit operations in the following ways are totally exempt from the Food Code and are not required to obtain an operating permit or submit plans: Non-potentially hazardous beverages are served directly into single-service articles from the original container (bottle or can); Single-service articles include providing customers with new, clean glassware to keep; customer’s own glassware for their own use, or disposable cups.



I wonder if they consider a Keg an "original container". Meaning if your serving directly from a keg into a disposable plastic cup would a tasting room be exempt?

The biggest impact obviously is a growler. Does filling a growler still require a food permit. The way places like BevMo apparently get around it is that they will not wash growlers. They require the customer to being in clean growlers.

http://www.bevmo.com/misc/contentpage.aspx?contentpageid=391

Will BevMo! wash my previously-used growler bottle?

Unfortunately, customers are required to clean and dry their previously-used growler jugs in advance of being filled, to avoid bacteria and unhealthy conditions. BevMo! will not fill dirty or wet growlers.

[rdcpro]

I wonder if they consider a Keg an "original container". Meaning if your serving directly from a keg into a disposable plastic cup would a tasting room be exempt?

The biggest impact obviously is a growler. Does filling a growler still require a food permit. The way places like BevMo apparently get around it is that they will not wash growlers. They require the customer to being in clean growlers.

I guess growlers are covered by "customer’s own glassware for their own use" or, if you sell them the growler, "providing customers with new, clean glassware to keep". But I was wondering the same thing about kegs. I remember the old Miller Lite commercial where the football player asks for "a can of beer for me and the boys" and the bartender hands him a keg.

[populuxebrewing]

Well as of 2.5 years ago when we were trying to open, the answer was no - kegs were not an "original container". If we wanted to serve with an exemption we would have to go into the cold room, fill a bottle off a keg with a beer gun, come out of the cold room and open that bottle up to pour out of. The bottle is the original container.

This only makes sense when you realize the KCH is only used to regulating bars and restaurants. Bottles and cans come from somewhere else, and they don't regulate that place where ever it is. So the assumption is that bottles are not contaminated because whomever made them has their own oversight. Kegs are a different story and for a while there was even some noise about KCH treating tap lines the same as food utensils, requiring them to be sanitized after each use.

We ended up having to get a risk category 1 food service establishment license from them in order to open up. One thing about that is that when you become a restaurant, the inspector gets a different check list. All restaurants require grease traps on their 3 compartment sinks. They may try and enforce that even if all you have is pretzels (open bowls of pretzels require a sneeze guard).

[Brandjes]

Thanks populuxe - Interesting info about kegs as original containers. If they aren't original containers and serving from them requires a license then it would reason that anyone selling or distributing kegs would also have to license their facility for food as well.

As long as everyone has to play by the same rules and the rules are equally enforced then I can't complain.

Setting the Keg issue aside, if you sell the customer a glass and fill it, they rinse it on their own and bring it back for refill... (just like at festivals) that is essentially the same a growler fill. Then provide a recycle tub and refund for the glassware if they choose to return it. You would have to take the glassware to the "re-cycle center" and bring in more "new" glassware. It might be a way to serve with real glasses and skirt the licensing.

[Bainbridge]

That and King County Health has been making periodic noises about trying to regulate the cleaning of draft lines. So even if a keg was an original container, they could get you because it touched your filthy, filthy draft lines. Or something.

But I'm in Kitsap County so nya nya nya nya. The City though, when we were opening, pulled up and I kid you not, a several year old pdf from the Kitsap health dept discussing how to handle newly legalized off-site wine tastings at, like, book stores and galleries, as evidence that we could only pour beer into single use disposable cups. This was after several weeks of wrangling about various zoning things so we just said "Uh Huhhh...we'll get right on that" and promptly got the basic level permit from the health dept that allows us to wash our own glassware. Still can't cut a lemon though. Sigh.