When the brewhouse opened it aimed to offer high-end coffee, beer, wine and cocktails, a “combination of coffee shop, bistro, and tavern all in one,” owner Kim Bender told The Post-Star earlier this year. “We wanted it to be a comfortable place for the community to come—anywhere from breakfast in the morning to drinks at night.” Everything was going fine for the restaurant when they opened across the street from the First Baptist Church on the village’s Main Street, just south of the village square.
When Bender applied for her liquor license through the state, she did it exactly as the state’s website told her to, and she has received a temporary license to sell beer, wine and alcohol-based cider, she said. However, according to the SLA website , there is a 200-foot rule liquor vendors need to adhere to in order to buy and sell cocktails. This additional license has been the issue for her and the state.
This rule states that in order to receive a full liquor license, the establishment must not be within 200 feet of the nearest entrance of a school or place of worship. Falcons Brewhouse is within the 200-foot rule of the Main Street entrance of the Baptist church, but the state-run website clarifies that “the distance is determined using only entrances that are regularly used to give ingress to (a) the students of the school, (b) the general public into the place of worship; and © patrons into the establishment.” It’s that notion of the entrance that is �.