How To Apply For A Liquor License

My partner, Marshall Johnston, and I decided to focus on the difficult process of obtaining a liquor license for a restaurant. This process is full of many instances where exceptions occur. There are many options that require people to have different forms depending on their personal preferences. There are options to be applying for a new establishment to use a liquor license or to keep the establishment that the liquor license is already permitted to be used for. It is necessary to buy an already exsisting license from a buisness willing to sell it. This is because the amount of available licenses depend on the population in Pennsylvania. Also, a license can't be sold to anyone outside of the specific county because that is how it's organized according to population. After a license to be sold is found, the buyer can apply for it and bargain a price for what it will be sold. Along with this there are fees for not only the license but the application fees also.

The forms to be filled out aren't simple at all. They ask for a few means of "background checks", like a "criminal report check" and a "tax certification statement". They also ask for every aspect that will be associated with the selling of the liquor such as the areas that will occupy liquor and the amount of space of each of these room. They ask for the information of the employees that will be responsible for the liquor and how long they've been a citizen

I would change the amount of unnecessary paperwork or make it more straight forward. There are many different variables that make it necessary to have different types of paperwork which is one thing that makes it unbearably confusing. I think it's this confusing because of the fact that everyone wants to be able to sell liquor and there are many more restaurants in Philadelphia alone than there are liquor licenses here. 

I thought it was interesting to investigate this process because I often see places around where I live obtaining liquor licenses and wonder why they didn't get one when they first opened. Now I know why and understand why liquor stores aren't open on Sundays. This is because there's a separate license to sell liquor on Sundays.