Pittsfield restaurants barely ‘stay afloat’ as they wait for liquor licenses. Here’s why the process is so complicated … and expensive | Central Berkshires

PITTSFIELD — Elizabeth Zucco knows the trick to running a successful restaurant business, regardless of menu or location: liquor sales.

“The property is what you make it, but I know alcohol is profitable,” Zucco said. “That’s what really paid our bills for the last 20 years.”

For the past 22 years, Elizabeth Zucco has been the co-owner of Zucco’s Restaurant on Dalton Avenue with her husband, Richard. Together, the couple just opened a new bar, Bei Tempi, in what used to be the Crossroads Cafe at 195 Onota St.

Alcohol sales are so integral to the Zuccos’ business that when they encountered obstacles obtaining the liquor license for Bei Tempi, they delayed opening.

It took Zucco less than five minutes to get approval for a license transfer from the Pittsfield Licensing Board in April 2023 — and over a year to get final approval from the state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission, or ABCC, due to a discrepancy with the previous owner of the building and license.

The Zuccos are among the latest Pittsfield business owners to get caught in a back-and-forth with the ABCC over a liquor license transfer. Other area restaurants have operated their first few months dry because of complications. Issues with paperwork, immigration status and more can hamstring an applicant. 

It’s a statewide issue, a bureaucratic web of regulations, in a state that didn’t allow alcohol to be sold in package stores on Sundays until 2004 and where happy hours are still banned.

But in Pittsfield, the problem is more stark: No new liquor licenses can be created by the city; there are none to give.

Roughly 40 years ago, municipalities in Massachusetts had the opportunity to take a one-time deal with the state to have no limit on liquor licenses, according to the ABCC. Great Barrington, Lee, Lenox, North Adams and Williamstown took this deal, but Pittsfield did not. 

This means hopeful applicants in Pittsfield must purchase transfers from former businesses owners, which makes it more likely the process will get held up by unresolved issues from the former holders of the license.

It’s a delicate balance, trying to encourage new businesses while checking all the boxes — a process that Thomas Campoli, chair of the Pittsfield Licensing Board, knows well. Over the years, he’s seen his fair share of businesses get mired in the applications, which he concedes can be frustrating.

But complying with the state’s requirements, much like applying for the transfer itself, is just “a cost of doing business,” he said.

“I’m sure that the way that the people at the state level deal with the applications is not exactly the way folks that live in this community would be dealing with it, knowing that the people who applied for the transfer are really relying on that to make a living,” Campoli said. “But [the ABCC] are doing their due diligence. They have to do that.”

THE ECONOMICS

The economics simply don’t favor a restaurant that can’t sell alcohol, local attorneys say.

“In this community, the economics of running a restaurant that’s open for dinner just don’t work without a liquor license,” said lawyer Jesse Cook-Dubin.

For restaurants, an all-beverage, on-premise license — colloquially known as a “pouring” license — is the most valuable permit available. The ABCC regulates other types of alcohol licenses as well, such as those for package stores or beer-and-wine-only licenses. 

But the revenue from a pouring license isn’t open to everyone, since Pittsfield has already exceeded its license quota. The city currently allows 54 “on-premise” all-beverage liquor licenses despite having a cap of 46. The permits over the cap are holdovers from the city’s population heyday — licenses are assigned based on the number of people in a municipality, and Pittsfield has held on to its licenses from the city’s booming General Electric days.

The asking price for a license in Pittsfield starts around $25,000, Cook-Dubin said, but it’s a seller’s market for the final figure. Zucco said she wouldn’t sell hers for less than $50,000. 

When a business owner does find a willing seller, a litany of issues can stunt the progress of their application, Cook-Dubin said. 

Though, Ralph Sacramone, executive director of the ABCC, said the application process is relatively straightforward but an applicant must follow the instructions to the letter.

Sacramone said if everything goes according to plan, the process shouldn’t take more than four weeks — applicants who are delayed by months are likely experiencing issues outside the commission’s control.

The average process time locally is about six to eight weeks, Cook-Dubin said, with no issues.

But when it comes to compliance with the state’s liquor regulations, “all bets are off,” Cook-Dubin said. Small errors can end up costing businesses weeks, months — or even longer.

“Every lawyer I know that does this work has had an application that’s been on hold for a year or more,” Cook-Dubin said.

‘AS MUCH TIME AS YOU NEED’

The liquor license application process is relatively simple from the ABCC’s end: The commission’s licensing division receives an application, an inspector reviews it, then it goes to Sacramone’s desk.

From there, the application gets passed along to the three commissioners that oversee the entire agency. If two of those three commissioners sign off, the license is enacted and the cocktails can stir.

But ensuring that those applicants are in compliance with state law is where things get tricky. In short, everything that an applicant submits needs to line up exactly with the operations on the ground — down to the last detail.

The square footage and dimensions of the restaurant, the name of the brick-and-mortar business and the corporation managing it and even information about the building’s landlord could be a snag for prospective owners.

Sacramone said many applicants err on Question 6 of the liquor license application, which asks proprietors to list information on everyone with an ownership interest in the company. It’s common to see incorrect information in this section, including mismatched titles and ownership stakes, Sacramone said.

The commission also ensures the “character fitness” of proprietors — the manager and anyone with an ownership stake must submit a Criminal Offender Record Information check to verify that they haven’t been convicted of a crime. State law does not allow convicted felons to operate businesses with a liquor license.

If a former business owner owes any back taxes to the state or unemployment assistance to its former staff, that has to be resolved before a license transfer. Often, the landlord of the property or the new license holder end up paying the debts of the previous license holder to keep the liquor license alive.

Cook-Dubin said citizenship requirements can be a hurdle for immigrant-owned businesses. State law says a license cannot be issued if the majority of a business’ directors are not U.S. citizens.

House of Seasoning, the West African restaurant owned by Mathieu Niamke and Raissa Doumbia, encountered this problem in January 2023. The initial application submitted by Niamke and Doumbia, natives of the Ivory Coast, was denied by the ABCC because the citizenship requirements were not satisfied.

House of Seasoning received its liquor license in March 2023 after resubmitting the application. The restaurant closed in March 2024 after an unrelated dispute with its landlord.

“When you have a citizenship requirement you are keeping immigrants out of the restaurant industry; when you allow a license to get tied up because of problems with owners’ debt, you’re preventing someone else from using that license,” Cook-Dubin said. “It’s ultimately the community that suffers from both those things.”

The commission gives guidance to immigrants on how to structure their businesses to avoid that problem, according to Sacramone.

Regardless of what the issue is, he said, the commission will give applicants the chance to rectify what needs to be fixed.

“We give you as much time as you need to straighten it out,” Sacramone said.

‘BACK AND FORTH’

Each time Pittsfield Attorney Bill Martin takes on a new client involved in a liquor license transfer, he worries he’ll come across a new hiccup.

“It feels a little bit like ‘Mother, may I?’” he said. “You do your best, and then you get your homework corrected, and you find out that you got a 97 when you needed 100. So, you gotta go back and do it again.”

When representing his clients Ronny and Louise Brizan, the owners of BB’s Hot Spot, he didn’t get the perfect score his clients needed.

The Caribbean restaurant has been open at its new location at 455 North St. since Jan. 1, but only got its liquor license on May 22. For the first five months of trying to establish themselves as a full-service eatery, the Brizans couldn’t serve liquor.

The application to transfer the liquor license from the previous restaurant in the space was held up by a clause in their lease, stipulating that the landlords of the building — Mill Town Capital — would gain ownership of the liquor license if the Brizans defaulted.

Martin said he has used similar language before, but the transfer application was denied, sending the Brizans back to the beginning. With each roadblock, the couple incurred more legal fees.

“It added cost because we had to go back and forth,” Louise Brizan said.

Ronny Brizan said the delay frustrated customers who wanted to buy drinks and employees who had to wait until the restaurant could sell alcohol to get more work hours.

“Without the liquor license, it kills my momentum,” Ronny Brizan said.

In the case of the Zuccos and Bei Tempi, the transfer from Jerry Colvin, the owner of the Crossroads Cafe, which closed nine months ago, proved problematic.

The liquor license wasn’t in Jerry Colvin’s name, but in the name of his wife who died 10 years ago. The Crossroads Cafe continued to pay its annual fees and renew the license, but when the ABCC realized the owner of the license was no longer living, they had questions that delayed the transfer for over a year.

Elizabeth Zucco doesn’t blame Colvin for the oversight.

“He just was trying to bury his wife, keep his head above water, run his company, mourn with his children, and keep his s— going,” she said.

While Zucco waited for the license transfer, she was paying for a commercial property that wasn’t bringing in any money.

“I had to sit on my down payment for eight months,” she said.

Despite the hassle and loss of profits, Zucco sees the value in regulating liquor, and added that she sees having a license as an honor and takes it seriously.

“The strict laws are made to regulate it for a reason, to keep that control over crowds,” she said.

With licenses in-hand the Brizans and Zuccos are trying to make up for lost time.

“We are thinking about moving forward and how we can make it profitable, watch our expenses, and stay afloat,” Ronny Brizan said.

NO ‘APPETITE’ FOR CHANGE

The consequences of a failed liquor license application almost always land hard on business owners who have already begun investing heavily, Cook-Dubin said. 

But the state law is not likely to change soon, according to state Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier, D-Pittsfield, who said changes on the local level are more likely.

“I really haven’t seen an appetite for that,” Farley-Bouvier said. “What people tend to want to do, community by community, is ask for more liquor licenses because a big problem with these is that there’s a scarcity of them.”

Farley-Bouvier said she wants to see more education opportunities for business owners.

Sacramone said the commission regularly hosts workshops across the state, adding that a session will likely be held in Pittsfield in the coming months. An official date has not been scheduled yet, he said.

Campoli said a seminar to help guide applicants through the process and “clear up some of that mysterious language” could be invaluable. 

Campoli recommended that any prospective applicants hire a lawyer to help them through the process, and make use of the ABCC’s online resources to get a better sense of the requirements.

State Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli, D-Lenox, has had a long working relationship with the ABCC and lauded them as highly responsive and helpful. Pignatelli said more education from the state down would benefit both local business owners and attorneys, as the process can be challenging without reinforcement.

“If you don’t do it on a regular basis, it’s hard to understand how it works,” Pignatelli said. 

As the process stands now, even those who frequently deal with liquor license applications feel unclear about all the details.

“As many times as I’ve done it,” Martin said, “I’m worried I’m going to learn something new.”