You might not have known that bartenders in Utah aren’t allowed to taste test their drinks. But here’s the thing — it doesn’t seem like they knew either.
We spoke with a Utah bartender, who asked to remain anonymous.
“I've worked at multiple bars across the state," he said, "and this has been news to a lot of my bartending friends.”
In a memo-type newsletter sent out by the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services (DABS) on Feb. 10, bartenders were reminded that drinking on the job is illegal under Utah state law — even if it’s just a few drops from a cocktail straw.
This is called “straw testing” and is defined by DABS as “when a bartender makes a cocktail and performs a quality control taste test by using a straw to pull a very small sip.”
“If I'm making bad drinks for my customers, I'm not going to get tipped as much," the bartender explained, "so I'm not going to make as much money. And that's not fair to me. That's not fair to the customer — that they get a bad experience and don't enjoy their drink, especially when they're paying some of these prices for these drinks.”
The newsletter emphasized that the state law making straw tests illegal is not new and has, in fact, been in place for decades.
“I remember thinking that that was kind of crazy," he said. "Because, well, how else am I supposed to know if this drink that I'm giving a customer is going to be something they like? Especially when I have a customer come up to my bar and just say, ‘make me something.’ That just gives me free rein, as the bartender, to kind of just throw a bunch of stuff together and see if it's good.”
At the same time this memo from DABS was sent out, Senate Bill 328 was moving through the legislature. Sen. Jerry Stevenson, the sponsor of this bill, said it would work to strike a balance, in terms of alcohol laws, between stakeholders in the state who are affected by alcohol sales.
“On one side, we have folks who deal with alcohol issues, if it's abused," Stevenson said, "which would include churches, our county health departments, law enforcement. And then you get on the other side of the issue, and you have people who make their living off of alcohol and its use.”
— that also includes bartenders across the state. But the good news for some bartenders, is that SB 328 contains a clause that “authorizes staff of a retail licensee that are 21 years old or older to test the quality and taste of liquor using the “‘straw test’” — in other words, now making it legal for bartenders to straw test their drinks.
The bill differentiates straw testing from other instances of drinking on the job, and definitely still prohibits being intoxicated at work.
“I don't think it counts as drinking on the job," the bartender added, "especially because the amount of straw pulls you'd have to do in order to get a significant amount of liquor in your system — you don't make that many drinks in a night at the busiest bars in the world, let alone at a bar in Utah, I will say.”
SB 328 was signed by Governor Spencer Cox this week. The new law will take effect on May 7.
