Have you ever wondered why Annapolis, our state’s fair capital city, does not have any craft breweries? After all, Frederick and Baltimore are home to multiple world class craft beer producers. Well, the answer is both simple and amazing: the zoning codes of the City of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County do not include brewing […]
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Things To Consider Before Signing a Restaurant Lease: Exclusive Use Provisions
Most well-negotiated restaurant leases contain a provision that states the tenant has exclusive rights to sell a certain style of food – e.g. that tenant will be the only one in the shopping center who can sell fast casual Mexican or sit-down Mediterranean or carry-out Chinese. If you do not have an exclusivity provision, there […]
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Things To Consider Before Signing a Restaurant Lease: Liquor Licensing
Restaurants have a notoriously high failure rate and, for many restaurants, their fate is sealed at the time they sign their lease. If a restaurateur is not careful, she can be saddled with lease terms that make the restaurant’s success even harder than it need be. It is absolutely critical to identify those lease terms […]
Read more...2015 Legislative Session Will Again Target Liquor License Residency Requirements
Readers of this blog may remember efforts that our principal, Sean Morris, engaged in last year to revise Montgomery County’s requirement that all liquor license applications include at least one individual who has been a resident of the County for two years or more. (You can read more here). That legislation, which would have permitted […]
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Montgomery County Offering New Services to Aspiring Restaurateurs and Food Entrepreneurs
If you have plans to open a restaurant or dream of starting a food-related business, Montgomery County has two new resources for you. First, the Department of Permitting Services has launched a program called “Recipes for Success” that is aimed at assisting aspiring restaurateurs to navigate the County’s permitting system. To open a restaurant in […]
Read more...UPDATE: SHA Opts Not to Appeal Pre-Condemnation Ruling from Montgomery County
This is to provide an update on this story from earlier this year, where we successfully defended a property owner’s right to deny the State Highway Administration’s efforts to gain access to his property for environmental testing, and actually had the statute in question declared unconstitutional. As matters turned out, the State Highway Administration did not appeal this […]
Read more...Can Montgomery County’s Liquor Control System Be Saved?
For the past year, the Montgomery County Department of Liquor Control’s dispensary system, which requires every keg, can, or bottle of alcohol sold within the county to be purchased from the County itself — either directly or indirectly — has been under fire. The State Comptroller, Peter Franchot, a county native and the state’s chief […]
Read more...Liquor License Provisions in “Fast Casual” Restaurant Leases
The Washington Post has an article today on the proliferation of Chipotle-inspired “fast casual” restaurants that allow customers to customize their meals with a variety of fresh ingredients. The article notes that, while more traditional fast food establishments (think McDonalds or Wendy’s or Taco) are struggling to find new opportunities for growth, fast casual restaurants are booming. […]
Read more...Montgomery County Judge Declares Key Maryland Eminent Domain Statute Unconstitutional
On Monday, July 14, a judge of the Montgomery County Circuit Court declared unconstitutional a long-standing law that permits the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) to obtain a court order allowing it to enter private property, without the landowner’s consent, and conduct intrusive drilling, soil sampling, and subsurface engineering studies. The law has been on […]
Read more...Restaurants Now Exempt from Adams Morgan Liquor License Moratorium
For the first time in five years, the District of Columbia will begin issuing in new liquor licenses to restaurants in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of the city. Until now, there had been a moratorium on the issuance of new such licenses, leaving aspiring restaurateurs with no choice but to identify a party willing to […]
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