“If I had only understood the importance of remaining compliant with the Responsible Vendor Program before law enforcement came in undercover.”
These words were spoken by a Food and Beverage Director working for a longtime client of ours. Unfortunately, it’s not the only time we’ve heard them.
- Anytime you hire someone new in the front of the house call or email us with his name and birth date so we can verify that he’s been through our program and through the new hire course; still then, he’ll likely need a tri-annual update.
- An employee who does not complete the initial new hire training within 30 days of hire is jeopardizing your status as a Responsible Vendor. We implore you to take anyone off the schedule who does not go through initial training within 30 days until he does.
- An employee who doesn’t complete the mandatory tri-annual updates every 4 months is jeopardizing your status as a Responsible Vendor and should be taken off the schedule until doing so.
- Updates are mandatory only 3 times each year every 4 months. Required for updates: all servers and sellers of alcohol, anyone checking I.D. to determine age and the managers who supervise all of the above.
- Please warn staff: The probability of law enforcement coming in to test them is high – the Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco is required to visit a certain number of licensees every year.
- It’s a second degree misdemeanor to sell or serve alcohol to an underage person – up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine on the first offense!
- We urge you to terminate an employee who serves an underage person.
- Be sure all staff remains current. Look closely at the reports of those who’ve completed courses and those who have not or are due again.
- Managers must take the manager portion of the course within 15 days of being made manager. If a server has completed the new hire course and later is promoted to manager, he needs to attend the manager portion within 15 days of his promotion and can attend at a predetermined time which must be set up with our office.
- Incident reports should be completed for incidents such as refusing to serve an underage person.
- A sign must be displayed stating that you must be 21 and prove it to be served alcohol and illegal drugs are not tolerated.
- If you sell cigarettes or other tobacco products, you must display a sign at the cigarette machine or point of sale stating that the customer must be 18 and prove it to be sold cigarettes.