Missouri is making plans to offer in-stadium beer sales for the 2019 season.
On Monday, Sterk will formally propose starting alcohol sales when he meets with the school’s Intercollegiate Athletics Committee, a collection of MU faculty, staff, alumni and students. The topic also could come up for discussion at next week’s UM System Board of Curators meeting in Columbia. Should MU approve to start sales this fall, Levy Restaurants — the school’s concessions company —would be responsible for hiring and training workers to comply with SEC regulations for game-day sales. For now, MU would like to start sales at football and men’s and women’s basketball games and probably baseball and softball contests.
I guess that’s what you can get done when you don’t have a Magill Society to flatter.
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UPDATE: Another SEC school checks in.
Get The Picture 
The more I think about it, the more I think this will be my 2020 road trip.
(And yes, I know we play at Tuscaloosa. I’ve been there – 2002 – so I’m good.)
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I went the 1st time it was a conf game – Old Man Football game – remember that?
Great town. Great time. Great bus system set up for bar hopping and travel to / back from stadium before / after game. Hope it’s still the same but for like $2 you could ride Tiger Tran or whatever it was called all around the downtown & to & from stadium. Good times.
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Do you think Jere will be able to solve his problem with serving in the stands if Mizzou forms the template?
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I don’t. It’s really an infrastructure issue at UGA in regards to servers and wait times. If you’re pouring beer that’s not gonna be done by volunteers. We all know about the horrible lines for concessions.
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Chawick, so you’re saying boy scouts and church ladies can’t card people and pour beers? They do so well with the cokes.
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Please be specific with “infrastructure issue”. If Mizzou and A&M can consider it, do you mean to tell me that we can’t serve a beer because we have concrete abutments next to serving/dispensing areas? Please let me solve this problem. Please.
If , by “infrastructure issue”, you mean closed minds that are like steel and concrete, well, ok, but those closed minds don’t run UGA. Someone should just go to a major league baseball game and get enlightened. Beer has been served at these venues for over 50 yrs. I’m sure that nondrinkers go to those games, but it doesn’t seem to cut down on attendance when someone else enjoys one.
I’ll state again that a form of ID can be provided to beer hawkers out in the stadium seats that’s provided at the gate with a photo ID (stamped hand, markers or buttons used only for one game and generated at the gate, etc.), but that isn’t the problem, is it? Closed puritanical minds might be the problem. Beer hawkers take you away from congested areas since their beer cups can be filled elsewhere and stacked for fast pickup and delivery.
Why not let someone prove that they can provide beer to the masses during college games? I’m sure the beer companies have a myriad of solutions.
Here. Hold my beer.
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Infrastructure, in regards to beer sales at Sanford, are lack of space in the concourses and lack of trained servers. I’m all for them putting beer hawkers in the stadium ala a pro sports franchise, but I don’t see that coming to Sanford anytime soon. That requires you hiring a third party vendor or hiring and training your own employees.
That’s just my take on why it’s not being done now. After a year or so to figure it out they might see how it’s done elsewhere and commit to it. If they do they’ll have to change how they currently handle concessions.
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Dang, Chadwick. UGA buys the beer from the beer companies furnished the way we want to dispense it. Seniors, grad students and anyone over 21 can walk down the isles and take/change money, all under the auspices of UGA. And nothing prevents those who can afford a libation from tipping those people a buck a beer. There probably won’t be time for anyone to have more than one beer because the demand would prevent the hawkers from returning a second time to the same place. A person would be lucky if they obtain a second beer before the game is over. People drinking wine can go and get their own since that’s higher alcohol and two wines can plaster the hell out of you out in the sunshine….but, beer? Nah.
This ain’t rocket science thinking that has to be led by Mizzou or A&M.
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It’s not rocket science, but it is a little more complicated than giving Tom, Dick and Harry a bucket of ice with beer cans in it and telling them to walk up and down the aisle.
For example, how do you suppose they are going to keep the beer cold, from the time it arrives on site until the time it arrives in your hand (unless you like warm beer)??? They already run out of ice and water on hot days already!
More importantly, I’m sure the University will love the look when its police force is arresting minors in possession of alcohol sold to them by other University employees, inside the stadium. The media circus will make the North Campus trash fiasco look like a walk in the park! (Again, A&M’s concessions are run by Landry – a professional firm – so that the Admin has another scapegoat for these incidents ).
Jere hasn’t labored so hard these past 20 years to dispel our image as “Party U” just to let it slip back down because old alumni want to drink a beer or two in the stadium!
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The interesting thing is that our concessions are run by a third party vendor also (still Aramark?) they just get rich off of “volunteer labor” They also hamstring those workers. The long lines are not all the fault of the church ladies.
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If you think Aramark uses church ladies by choice, you are sadly mistaken. The who, what, how and when for Aramark (including their profit margin) are all directly controlled by the Athletic Association.
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What’s this “bucket of beer” thingy? One individual can carry 24-48 pre-poured beers in 12 oz cups in a segmented square box strapped around the neck.
A beer vendor is hired to furnish kegs on a cart, it’s separated off from anyone not picking up crates of cups filled with cold beer fresh out of the keg. If you think that the beer will be warm before a customer buys it, then you don’t drink beer. If you think that the last drop from a keg that’s brought in cold isn’t cold when the spigot is open all the time, then you don’t drink beer. A keg on wheels doesn’t take much room and can be placed at 24 or more sites in that stadium. Btw, I drank Brit beer (John Courage, etc.) for over a year in the Bahamas that was served at just below room temperature. Delicious! But stadium beer will never come to that. Some of you really need to take in a Braves game and touch the cups that are hawked in the stands. It’s probably less than a minute from a cold keg.
“Party U” – are you kidding me? We ain’t talking about Chick Fil A here. We are simply talking about furnishing a beer to fans on hot (or cold) days in a manner that doesn’t impose any detriment to those who don’t drink beer. Guess you don’t tailgate as well.
This strawman “trashed areas” is silly. Of course there will be cups other than Coke or other soft drink cups lying about, but the stadium is cleaned of this after every game. That can be in the vendor’s contract and take responsibility off the UGA cleanup crews who will be cleaning up elsewhere after every game. Is there a “media circus” concerning the trash left in the stands after games? No. Will there be one with beer cups lying with the other soft drink trash? Nope.
I’ve already given you a system of verifying IDs at the gate to prevent minors from breaking the law or having police wandering about the stands in your police state vision.
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I despise hawkers in the seating areas. Block the field views & the cotton candy poles are the worst.
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I think I read somewhere that the SEC policy doesn’t allow for the alcohol to be sold in seating areas. So no beer hawkers roaming the aisles, which is fine with me.
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OK, let’em stand at the top of the isle and serve. My point is that no one has to stand in a congested line that’s preconceived to cause stress and be fan unfriendly. Many here seem to think that those lines can never be organized out of existence. I beg to differ.
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The Georgia Way is gonna Georgia Way (sigh).
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There is absolutely no straight faced argument against selling beer stadiumwide at this point. Other than, of course, shaming boosters into ponying up so they don’t feel like poor ass little bitches when their friends can buy beer but they can’t.
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It’s honestly absurd that we have the Northwest Oglethorpe Baptist Church Ladies Auxiliary or the Winder Middle School FFA working concessions at all. There’s 93,000 people in Sanford on a gameday. An elite program deserves a professional stadium staff. Concessions are probably the worst part of the entire gameday experience.
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I agree if by ‘concessions’ you include both the obtaining and the elimination of said concessions.
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And the kids who work there are already subjected to a tremendous amount of abuse from drunk ass idiots. Maybe it will get better when they can buy it in the stadium.
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Gee, we have “drunk ass idiots” abusing people in a stadium that doesn’t serve beer yet? They must be leaving their clubhouse seats to roam the stadium and harass people who can’t get a drink. How silly is that?
Blue Laws have returned to us via the college stadium. Wow!
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Just hope UGA doesn’t give the Magill Society an exclusive on Cokes and peanuts
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Rest assured, it’s easier to make the entire stadium Magill Society-only.
#COMMITMORETOTHEG.
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I think the 2019 plan is a stepping stone. We’ll see stadium wide sales in 2020.
Concessions has been better, but still needs improvement. This will just compound that, but we can make it happen.
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You don’t have to create another traffic jam at concessions that seems to have taken years to improve. Tap beer can be wheeled into 20 places all over the stadium tomorrow and dispensed to cups placed in ques that can be carried anywhere by hawkers. You say there isn’t enough room? If you can find room where elite boosters can have a Biergarten all to themselves, you can find areas to dispense beer that doesn’t call for such a large area. Or you could have 10 beer dispensers in that same Biergarten
area to keep sellers busy carrying beer to the unwashed minions.
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Concession lines is not an insurmountable problem. It just demonstrates that the administration doesn’t want to participate in problem solving. Nor do they want the unwashed to have beer at their disposal in a college game.
Blue Laws were overcome after years of dawdling with the most ephemeral excuses known to man. In the 60s, Clark county was dry and it was voted that way. Those of us trying to reverse it on the ballot took photos of the empty liquor bottles piled up at the Clarke County garbage dump and published them in the ABH to show how much money was leaving the county in two directions (SC and Atl) and how county abstinence laws weren’t affecting liquor consumption. Closeminded locals gradually got the idea and changed, but not without dragging every excuse in the world out to extremes. Don’t continue that old Blue Law dictum into our stadium when you know that it is inevitable that beer sales throughout the stands will be in place after those excuses have faded.
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Y’all have fun waiting 48 minutes waiting for Peter and Tommy from Scout Pack 714 to pour you a $9 Miller Lite.
I’m gonna stick to Mr. Ziplock.
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Me too, Hobnail. Me too.
It’s tradition.
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There’s simply no way that McGarity is going to leave all of that money on the table for lone, especially when his SEC rivals start picking it up off of their table. He can find another way to flatter the Magill Society folks. Nobody is paying $25K just to buy a beer in Sanford Stadium (where they can’t see the field) anyway. They were paying that money already. There will be in-stadium concession beer in 2020 even if it means the stadium has to hire workers for certain booths instead of using the Jackson County High School Band Boosters. UGA will offset the loss of staffing costs with about 30 seconds’ worth of beer sales.
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Am always amazed at the “money” argument. Even at a $5 profit margin (which is probably pretty generous), selling 50,000 beers a game is only $250,000 per game, or $1.5MM per year – doesn’t move the need much in a $150MM+ per year budget…
A pittance compared to the extra hassle and potential for bad PR…
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Bad PR? Then don’t serve liquor anywhere in the stadium. Bad PR, my ass!
And don’t forget that any leftover beer can easily promote a beer fight with rivals at the end of the game. Remember when Auburn used that leftover water they placed in a hose years ago and sprayed Dawg fans?
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Ever been to Saint Louis? they drink like fish there… This should surprise no one.
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