Those evil tied houses

All last week's discussion of "tied houses" laws left my head spinning, so I decided to do some further research.

The original tied houses were pubs that were contracted with (or owned by) specific breweries to sell only that brewery's beer. The brewery got a steady source of demand, the pub got favorable pricing or exclusive sales rights, and everyone was happy.

Miller Cafe in Milwaukee (Photo: MillerCoors, via https://onmilwaukee.com/bars/articles/miller-tied-houses.html)

Well, not everyone. Tied houses were a villain to temperance campaigners. Pubs tied to breweries were fiercely competitive. (After all, it was doubly important to sell the beer -- it mattered to both the pub business and the brewery business!) The results were aggressive marketing tactics: low beer prices, offers of free lunch with drinks, and salty bar snacks, all things that encourage more drinking. Temperance leaders blamed alcohol consumption for crime and low living standards -- and tied houses were scourges that encouraged intoxication. (Adopting the second part of this narrative, many histories of tied house law partially blame the tied house system for Prohibition. If not for excessive drinking in tied houses, the logic goes, public outrage over alcohol wouldn't have been sufficient to justify the Eighteenth Amendment.)

When Prohibition was repealed after a disastrous thirteen years, states were given the responsibility of writing and enforcing their own liquor laws. Each created some form of a three-tier system with tied-house prohibitions.

From brewery-owned pubs where people got too drunk to wineries getting in trouble for tweets seems like a stretch, but there you go! California tied house laws were upheld in court as recently as 2017, and some people think these laws are still an essential part of encouraging temperance. It will be interesting to follow the legal developments: as tied house laws vs. First Amendment cases crop up around the country, this issue may end up in the Supreme Court.