Brewpub... Restaurant and Brewery seperate businesses?

[kevobutler]

First post here, In the process of expanding a well established restaurant (Florida) into a brewpub and was wondering if the brewery could be owned independently from the restaurant even though the restaurant is the establishment that is licensed as a brewery with the TTB.

Basically, could the brewing company provide "brewing services" for the restaurant using the restaurant's brewing license?

[ponysaurusbrew]

State laws differ, obvi, but in our state, only one individual or company can own all the ABC licenses for a single address. So while you could set up a seperate LLC to handle the books and seperate the finances of the brewing operation, the "brewing" LLC is in name only; according to state and federal regulators, it doesn't actually engage in any relevant & regulated activity. We had a reason to do it that way, but I don't know what yours would be.

[kevobutler]

Thanks for the quick reply. In our case, the restaurant is owned by my business partner's uncle and has been there for 40+ years. He owns the entire building (as well as several outbuildings) and the property and was going to allow us to build a brewery on the property without charging any rent. We are not interested in the wholesale beer market and want to sell the product at the retail level. My partner and his uncle are like family to me, but we do want to keep the businesses separate. Our plan (and hopefully it is legal) is to have his uncle handle all of the zoning/licensing/TTB to make his establishment a brewpub and then our LLC provide the brewing services with the restaurant funneling our % of the retail beer sales into our LLC's account.

We're not quite ready to contact a lawyer on this matter and just wanted to see if anyone was familiar with anyone in a similar arrangement. We want to make sure this is a legally feasible model before we move further with our plans.

[HogMountain]

To the OP, did you ever figure this out? I sent you a PM regarding two businesses that were operating under a similar situation as you are describing.