The micro brewery

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From the Ambergris Daily:

Well the owners appear to be pissed off and a number of readers wrote in stating the case for the Micro Brewery and the upshot is there are a lot more supporters for this than not. However if this couple had not gone and announced that they would do off-sales, and encourage people to buy and take their beer home with them. The Ambergris Daily wonders if they would have run into so much red tape, and been allowed to open.

The Ambergris Daily also wonders how easy it would be for two foreigners to go to the USA and open a micro brewery and what would the costs be. Our guess is that it would be impossible to open anything like this with liquor licenses, zoning, green cards ect., for under a 1,000,000usd.

Obviously who ever wrote this article smokes too much weed.  Almost every major city in America has at least one micro brewery.  Recently 2 friends of mine in a town of 50,000 opened a micro brewery for $160,000.  The governmental costs were less than $8000 in building permits and a city business licence costing $200.00.  The remaining cost was equipment and a leased building remodel (hence the cost for the building permit) which included the installation of a grease interceptor, required by law.

Unlike Belize bribes are not the main cost of doing business in America.  Someone needs to educate the staff at Ambergris Daily before they make complete asses of themselves.

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And actually the laws here in Belize for a BrewPub are pretty simple.  You can't sell more than 12 bottles (or equivalent) at a time. License fee of $50 annually. And you must pay $1.40 in tax (per bottle produced) to the Customs and Duty Comptroller.

It's not that onerous.  The problem these guys are having is that the Comptroller isn't interested in taking their money. 

Micro Beweries on the other hand are essentially illegal as there are minimum shipment and sales requirements once you go over the 12 bottle limit.  I'm guessing this is in place to keep the Bowen monopoly secure.

I looked into this a while ago as I thought a brewpub would be a great idea.  I also could get the equipment at a discount due to a business I knew going under in the states.  The timing wasn't right for me so I didn't do it.  But I applaud their effort and will support them any way I can, even if it's just buying a some beer to enjoy.

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Also, the Brewery Act only provides for drinks having 2% or more alcohol content.  They could start brewing a low alcohol light beer with say 1.5% or 1.8% alcohol today and avoid paying the tax entirely.