Licensed restaurants in British Columbia can now allow customers to bring their own wine.
The Bring Your Own Wine program went into effect on July 19.
“Bring Your Own Wine offers more choice and flexibility for both customers and businesses. The Province, the restaurant industry and consumers in B.C. all strongly support this change,” a British Columbia Liquor Control and Licensing Branch (LCLB) spokesperson wrote in an e-mail to The Free Press.
Participation in the program is left to the individual restaurant. The wine must be unopened and commercially produced, meaning no homemade products are permitted.
Customers will be required to hand the bottle to a staff person as soon as they enter the restaurant.
Restaurants may set a corkage fee for the service.
Customers will be allowed to take home unfinished bottles of wine. The restaurant is required to put a new cork in the bottle. As is the case with all opened liquor bottles, it must be stored out of reach from anyone in the car.
The LCBL spokesperson went on to write, “the province had received a number of requests from the public over the past several years to allow customers to bring their own bottle of wine into a restaurant. The Canadian and BC restaurant associations had also written in support of this initiative.
