What Licenses are Needed to Start a Catering Business in California
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What Licenses are Needed to Start a Catering Business in California
How to Use it
Send an ABC-239 Correction/Application Request Form that you have filled out to your local ABC office. Each person who has a license can only apply for one caterer's permit. The annual fee for a caterer's license can be different depending on the type of license and how many people live in the city where the license is located. Section 23320 of the Business and Professions Code tells us how much catering permits cost each year. You can also check out our website or call your local ABC office to find out about fees and get help filling out Form ABC-239. If your application for a catering permit is approved after it is looked into, you can expect to get the permit from the ABC Headquarters in Sacramento.
What Licenses are Needed to Start a Catering Business in California
Catering Authorization
For each catered event you want to use your caterer's permit for, you need to get permission from ABC. Send a completed Catering Authorization Application (Form ABC-218) to your local ABC office at least 3 days before the event and no more than 30 days before the event. If an application is sent in after this date, it may not be processed. You may also have to send in a Supplemental Diagram (Form ABC-253) that shows where the event will take place.
What Licenses are Needed to Start a Catering Business in California
A catering authorization fee is different from an annual caterer's permit fee, and it depends on how many people are expected to attend the catered event. This fee is collected for each day of the event that alcohol is being sold. Here is a list of the fees for catering authorizations:
$100 = fewer than a thousand people
$325 = one to four thousand people
$1000 = at least 5,000 people
When the same event takes place on two or more days in a row, you only need to fill out one Form ABC-218. Please fill out a separate Form ABC-218 for each date that is not in a row. Your Form ABC-218 must be sent with payment.
What Licenses are Needed to Start a Catering Business in California
For one-day events, you can't get your money back. For events that last more than one day, you can't get your money back for the first day. Fees for subsequent days may be refunded if the event is canceled. To get a refund, you must send a written request to the Department explaining why the fees should be refunded.
Where catered events take place, What Licenses are Needed to Start a Catering Business in California
ABC must first agree on where a catered event will take place. ABC's choice may depend on how close it is to schools, churches, State and Federal buildings, and other facilities. Zoning could also play a role. Also, a catering license won't be given to a place that was denied a license before because it was too close to a consideration point or went against a valid zoning ordinance, unless the person in charge of the consideration point or, in the case of a zoning conflict, the legal representative of the community involved signs a written waiver. (Rule 60.5(2) CCR)
Licensees with Type 41, 42, 47, 48, 57, 78, 83, 87, or 88 can serve alcoholic drinks anywhere in the state if ABC says so. However, each site can only host up to 36 catered events per year. (There may be an exception if the licensee can prove that more events are in the best interest of the state and are needed to meet a large amount of public demand.)
Type 50, 51, and 52 licensees can only serve food on the premises of the licensed club, and events are not open to the public. (An exception could be made if the licensee could show the Department that having people at the event would be good for the State as a whole.) There is no limit on how many permissions they can get each year.
What Licenses are Needed to Start a Catering Business in California
A catered event can take place in a building or on land that is not licensed, in a licensed building, in a separate room in a licensed building, or on a boat or other vessel. If the location has a license, that license must be given to ABC while the catered event is happening. To give up a license, the holder must fill out a License Action Request (Form ABC-231). Please keep in mind that even though the license has been returned, any rules that normally apply to it still do. For example, if a catered event is being held on the property of a Type 48 license, people under the age of 21 cannot attend.
On private school grounds, you can have a catered event, but you can't sell or serve alcoholic drinks during school hours.
Other rules from the law
At all approved events, you can only do things that your license lets you do. You must follow all of the rules in the ABC Act. Your license or permit could be suspended, revoked, or both for any violation, even if it didn't happen on your licensed premises.
With a catering authorization, you are allowed to serve alcoholic drinks. At a catered event, food service is not required unless the site is within a certain distance of a state prison, university, state college, veteran's home, or other state or federally run institution. (Rule 60.5(3) CCR)
What Licenses are Needed to Start a Catering Business in California
People under 21 may be able to go to a catered event, unless the place where the event is usually held doesn't let people under 21 in. But they are not allowed to own, buy, or drink alcoholic drinks.
Wholesalers can bring alcoholic drinks to the site of the catered event. You can't store spirits that have been distilled at the event site. After the event, the distilled spirits must be brought back to the licensed place. What Licenses are Needed to Start a Catering Business in California