Last week Governor Pritzker added a statewide mask mandate for all public places that became effective Monday. Meanwhile the earlier issued City of Chicago mask mandate has already been enforced by BACP agents.

The City of Chicago has updated their Covid resources page to include this newest mandate and the Chicago Department of Public Health has produced updated signage reflecting this newest mandate in both English and Spanish. The Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (BACP) has also uploaded recordings of their earlier mask mandate webinars with additional details including the Q&A sessions at the end of each webinar.

HBAC has requested copies of the enforcement reports to glean additional guidance for member businesses, however repeated points of emphasis by BACP staff have been:

1) Bars, restaurants, and music venues MUST have the City mask order sign posted at each customer entrance to a business. You can download the required sign here.

2) Staff on the clock MUST wear masks when indoors including security/host staff at or near entrances.

HBAC will share the details on other BACP enforcement trends as soon as possible once the mask mandate inspection records are available. Meanwhile get those City signs up at your entrances and ask your door staff to mask up whenever they step indoors.

On Friday, August 20th Governor Pritzker signed Public Act 102-0442 into law a lengthy bill making many adjustments to the Illinois Liquor Act. Many of the changes are primarily applicable to brew pubs and small brewers and oddly, producers of mead. The main changes for bar, restaurants, and music venues are threefold:

1) Management of the Delinquent List for Wine & Spirits invoices will move from the Wine and Spirits Distributors of Illinois to the ILCC on January 1st, 2022. While this should be a minimal change for most retailers, HBAC will work with both the ILCC and WSDI to minimize disruptions to retailers placed on the Delinquent List thru administrative error or bona fide payment disputes with a wholesaler. Also note that the State of Illinois takes more paid holidays than the WSDI office does so quick removal may not be as readily available to retailers placed on the Delinquent List.

2) In a much needed and long overdue reform, the new law also makes a retailer's emergency run to a corner store to replace some out of stock wine or spirits a warning offence and not an automatic fine for first and second offenses in any 12 month period. Please note that retailers on the Delinquent List are NOT allowed to do this, and would still face major potential penalties for a violation if they purchased products from a retailer. This change aligns Illinois with Wisconsin and allows retailers a little much needed flexibility in these times of rampant out of stocks at wine and spirit wholesalers. Please note: Buying beer or hard seltzer from other retailers remains a fine-able offense for any Illinois retail liquor licensee.

UPDATE: NOTHING'S CHANGED, KEEP CALLING AND SOCIAL MEDIA POSTING YOUR MEMBERS OF CONGRESS AND ASK THEM TO #ReplenishTheRRF.

As most HBAC members are well aware, a majority of Chicago Restaurant Revitalization Fund (RRF) applicants have yet to be funded. Efforts are ongoing in Congress to replenish the RRF to provide this badly needed assistance to every eligible applicant. Unfortunately on August 7th, 2021 Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) blocked efforts to fast track replenishing the RRF in the Senate. With the vast majority of US Senators in support RRF will very likely receive additional funds in the next several months, but the timeline is far from clear.

Article from a Connecticut paper on why Senator Paul blocked this nearly unanimous funding bill and why it's passage is of critical importance to bars and restaurants across Chicago and the United States.

Please use this excellent toolkit from the Independent Restaurant Coalition to contact your members of Congress and educate your customers and staff on the importance or replenishing the RRF. Even though much of the Chicagoland congressional delegation is fully in support of replenishing the RRF every bit of outreach you, your staff, or your customers send to Congress increases the urgency on Capitol Hill to fully fund this critical program for Chicago's bars, restaurants, and eligible event venues.

You can read the City of Chicago's complaint against Grubhub here and the separate complaint against DoorDash here.

The City of Chicago asks "If any Chicago restaurant or consumer wishes to inform the City about their experience with meal delivery companies, they can do so by emailing mealdelivery@cityofchicago.org." or by taking this online survey released on Monday by BACP.

HBAC will cover the new lawsuits in more depth in our next newsletter after the third party food delivery apps file their lawsuit replies, and/or City also files suit against Postmates or UberEats.

Restaurant Business - NYC approves permanent cap on delivery commissions

"In New York, the companies will not be allowed to charge commissions greater than 15% for delivery and 5% for any other services. The bill also caps transaction fees at 3% of the order total unless the delivery company can prove that a higher charge was imposed by a credit card company or another payment provider."

"That measure would require delivery companies to get a license and sets up an enforcement process for four other delivery-related regulations enacted recently. Those include requiring delivery companies to share customer data with restaurants, prohibiting them from listing a restaurant without its permission and requiring them to display restaurants' direct phone numbers on their listings."

HBAC, at a minimum, will continue to urge City Council members to adopt permanent legislation in Chicago banning the apps from re-directing customer phone calls from bars and restaurants, and listing businesses on their apps without consent (aka Postmates).

Video from the city's POD security camera, first obtained by CWB, shows the scene in the 400-block of State Street around 1:30 a.m. Saturday.

A simple reminder that working security cameras in your bar or restaurant can be invaluable in defending your business against lawsuits and in aiding Chicago Police Department investigations. And also that Chicago Municipal Code requires liquor licensees to promptly cooperate with City agents when they request security camera footage. So make sure your managers know how to contact you or operate the video export function on your security camera system.

Did your State required BASSET certification for responsible alcohol service expire during the pandemic? Illinois requires it for all bartenders, servers, and staff who check customer identification.

Not sure if your State of Illinois BASSET certification is current: You can easily check your certificaiton on the Illinois Liquor Control website here: ILCC BASSET card lookup tool.

HBAC in partnership with SureSell Training offers State approved BASSET Training online for on-premise retailers which covers all required areas including responsible service and ID verification basics. The course cost is a competitive $12.95 and HBAC also receives a commission on all enrollments to help fund Responsible Service programs. The HBAC responsible service programs include generating and sending certificates to the hundreds of bars and restaurants who successfully pass Chicago Police undercover Sales of Alcohol to Minor (SAM) stings every year.

In addition using the HBAC SureSell portal allows us to easily find past student records of course completion and help them obtain replacement cards as needed, a huge time savings to you and HBAC.