NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Pippin Williamson with Sandhills Brewing is still amazed by the outpouring of support from the community that happened to his establishment a year ago.
"Every liquor establishment, anybody that sells beer, wine, liquor, etc., is required by the state of Kansas to sell 30% of their gross receipts in food," Williamson said. "That number is only reported once every two years. It's reported when you go through the process of renewing your liquor license. We were going through that process. We did not have 30% food sales. In the past, the general understanding with the state of Kansas was that, that rule is not particularly enforced. No one really cares. If it did come up to be an issue, it would be an issue for the county to work with the establishment to determine, what's the best path forward? What happened instead is, when we went through the process of renewing our license, the ABC, which is the Kansas Alcoholic Beverage Control, basically said no. They refused to issue a license renewal. There was a lot of details over the course of a couple of weeks of how that all went down as we continued to have conversations with the ABC, but ultimately, they were not going to issue us a renewal. So, we discovered that the only way for us to keep our license was to make up the difference in food sales in order to hit 30%."
That was a daunting task, by the time the problem was fully understood.
"Initially, we believed that number to be around the $16,000 in food mark," Williamson said. "Due to the way that the food sales formula works, it turns out it was actually much higher than that. We ultimately needed about $38,000 in food and we had about 10 days to do it."
Sandhills asked their customers to buy a lot of food, fast.
"We had 10 days to do it," Williamson said. "We had to complete it before the end of September. The community of Hutchinson came out in droves and absolutely floored us with their response. It was incredibly humbling and an amazing experience. They came out and bought $42,000 of food in just five days."
Williamson is celebrating this weekend and he'd like the community to join them again.
"On Friday, we are making a whole bunch of smoked pork sandwiches," Williamson said. "On Saturday, we have a burger food truck coming. On Friday, anybody that buys food, all of their beers are $1. That's kind of paying homage back to something that we did last year, when we realized that we were in a bind and really had to get a lot of food sales, but more importantly, we had to get the percentage of food sales compared to beer sales higher. What we did is we discounted every beer to $1. For that whole week last year, every beer on the menu was $1. I think a lot of people enjoyed that. We sold a lot of beer. This Friday, we're going to do the same thing. From 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., all beers are $1 for anybody that purchases food. On Saturday, from 5 p.m onward, when the food truck is there, all beers are half off for everyone, regardless of food purchase."
Sandhills Brewing is at 111 W 2nd Ave. Suite E in Hutchinson. Williamson also is promoting the upcoming vote for Reno County voters to eliminate that 30% food sales requirement going forward. A Yes vote Nov. 7 will take that requirement away locally.
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