We get asked a lot of questions by our clients regarding our mobile taps. How do they work, where can they operate, what kind of liquors can they carry? While there are certainly a lot of details and questions it’s important to make sure are resolved before your big event. Some of these are just a result of common misconceptions about mobile taps and mobile bars in general. Here are a few things you should know about mobile taps for your next special event.
Mobile Taps and Bars Come With Their Own Liquor License
One of the most frequent questions we get asked is if we can serve liquor and beer in X, Y, or Z locations. With rare exceptions, the answer is yes! We have our own liquor license, independent of any venue or location where you want us to serve. This means that we can buy and sell alcohol legally in the state of Maine. If we’re catering at a venue or a private location, there’s no issue with serving alcohol from our mobile taps.
This means that if the venue where we are does not have a liquor license, there’s no problem! Our license is associated with our business and our vehicle, not with the venue where it’s parked. This means we can serve outside your favorite event venue, golf club, ski resort, or other location!
However, in the state of Maine, and most other states, there are restrictions around serving alcohol in many public locations. You cannot take alcohol served to you under our license into public spaces. This is similar to how you cannot take your drink outside onto the sidewalk or road from your favorite stationary bar. We will make sure to alert you to any relevant restrictions of this nature that might in any way affect alcohol service at your event.
Mobile Taps Can Be Completely Independent Of Food Catering
While we love our incredible catering food trucks, our mobile tap trucks can be booked entirely separately. The two services can be engaged independently of each other. This is important because many times, especially for events at a venue, there is already food on site, but no alcohol. That’s where we come in!
We carry a wide range of local brews and we carry wine and prosecco on tap. Originally, that was all we offered, but these days we also carry and can serve hard liquors and mix fantastic cocktails. You can find a menu of our beverage offerings here. There’s almost no end to the combinations and options presented by our 10 separate taps and full bar offerings.
This flexibility is what makes a mobile tap so appealing for a wide range of events. We have the ability to fully cater, but also supplement your favorite food caterer or restaurant. If you want to make sure that you’re getting your event catered by a restaurant you love, know that the vast majority of restaurants in Maine cannot serve alcohol except at their location. This is the case even if they have a liquor license. So if your venue is separate from the restaurant, a mobile bar might be the best and safest legal option for serving great adult beverages to your guests.
Mobile Taps Don’t Have To Be Open Bars
A common misconception when people reach out to us is that they have to pay for the alcohol being consumed ahead of time. This is certainly an option, and even a fairly popular one, but you certainly don’t have to pay for all the alcohol as the event organizer. Open bars are a steadfast staple of wedding catering, but it’s by no means a necessity.
We have the flexibility to charge people for drinks as they come with a full cash bar. This means that guests can get anything they want from the bar, but have to pay for it themselves. This is a more affordable option and also tends to cut down on excessive drinking. After all, if it’s free and free-flowing, people tend to consume more alcohol. As a middle option, you can choose to partially subsidize your guests.
A favorite example of how to do this well is with drink tokens. You can provide every guest a single drink token, or a couple, or a few, and all additional drinks are paid for out of pocket by your guests. This gives the best of both worlds. People don’t feel restricted from having fun, but you’re also not breaking the bank serving them their favorite beverages all night out of your own pocket.
Our Mobile Taps and Mobile Bar Don’t Cut Corners
A lot of people seem to think that there’s some sort of difference or loss of quality between our mobile taps and a traditional bar or catering service that includes alcohol. Nothing could be further from the truth! We only carry mid and top-tier brands and varieties of liquor, and the beer we carry is the finest Maine craft brews.
Our mobile taps, because of a reduced capacity compared to a traditional bar, have a stronger priority on quality than quantity. As a result, our mixed drinks are actually of better quality on average than you’ll find at a traditional bar. The same principle applies to the beer we have on tap. We can’t carry everything under the sun when we have just 10 taps available, but what we can do is carry the best beer available.