Probably a slim reed, but there’s no mention in that quoted regulation of customers buying wine in a restaurant from, essentially, a third party.
Now that I know, absolutely, is illegal. My selling wine to another individual in NJ w/o a license is no good.
Peter you may be able to sell through a wholesaler.
I’d pursue the ownership angle.
See if they won’t let you [with an ownership stake in the restaurant] sell what had been your own wine if it has been deeded over to the S-Corp or LLC which owns the restaurant.
Or else become a distributor and sell it to the restaurant [but again you will have to see whether you can deed your own wine over to your distributorship].
Yep. Need to find a pliable wholesaler though, and if he operates in NJ, not sure he can buy from me!
That’s the key Peter. Here there are smaller distributors that this works with.
I would try to find a small distributor who’s willing to act as a broker for a small fee. If all they have to do is paperwork and maybe move the wine one time so it has technically been in their warehouse, hopefully someone won’t want to charge you too much. I don’t know for sure if even that is legal in NJ, but I know it can be a way around this in other states.
Unfortunately, in NJ, seems that it’s illegal for me to sell wine to a distributor. All paths in and all paths to the consumer must be registered with the State. I cry Uncle and I’m out…
Bingo.
And you can’t own a distribution license AND a retail license. In fact, they recently went so far as to abolish nepotism in the state as well. Some retailers had family members that were employees of the wholesalers, and they were the sales rep for that account. They made that illegal.
NJ laws are tough. Very tough.
Peter, FWIW, I’m not even sold that if you could get you wines on the list that they would be big movers, unless they were aggressively priced. Newark is certainly better than it was 20 years ago, but also not a cosmopolitan market either 