TABC ?'s (Austin, El Paso: sales, lawyer, inspector) - Texas (TX) - City-Data Forum

dabull430 · 03-05-2009, 01:05 AM

Hello to everyone, I work at a restaurant in El Paso and we serve beer, wine, and liquor. An investigator from TABC went to go do an inspection and found one of the TABC stamps on a new bottle of Tequila was slightly peeling off... he asked to see the invoice for the bottle (and by law you have to keep the invoices of all your alcohol on site for the past three years). He also found a bottle of vodka with the stamp barely peeling (like one corner, stamps have to stay on the bottle till the bottles done then the stamp is scratched off).

GM pulled out the invoices, the tequila stamp #(all stamps are numbered) matched an invoice but they couldn't find the invoice for the vodka, so the inspector started gloating and saying "I caught you dude I caught you" to the GM. Inspector confiscated the two bottles and handed the GM a paper saying there was going to be an administrative case filed against the business and takes off without letting the GM have a word.

Gm calls his liquor distributor asking if they could find the invoice for the vodka bottle. They call him 15 minutes later and said the bottle was bought in 01-06...GM then calls the investigator and says he found the invoice, inspector says it's too late now we'll get back to you. TABC called back and set up a meeting.

GM and owner go to meeting and to make a long story short(too late) TABC is accusing owner of refilling the bottle of vodka with cheaper vodka and not reporting the sales. That does happen in many places but here we do not sell high volume of liquor and alot of the bottles have been there a long time. Nevertheless owner is told to pay a fine 0f $6000

or license will be suspended or revoked, not too sure which one.

Can anybody shed some light on this situation?

Poltracker · 03-05-2009, 07:06 AM

Owner needs to get an attorney and appeal the decision. Will probably need to pull liquor sales records from 2006 to illustrate the low volume. Good luck!

fakeguy · 03-05-2009, 09:43 AM

Sounds like bullying by the TABC. Tell the GM to fight back.

dabull430 · 03-06-2009, 04:06 PM

Well it seems kind of fishy to me. They're are just accusations...it's not like they found unstamped bottles or any evidence of wrongdoing! I could understand if they had any kind of unstamped bottles on the premises but they have no shred of evidence whatsoever!

dabull430 · 03-06-2009, 04:08 PM

Or is the tabc so powerful they could get a conviction from an investigators hunch?

troublemaker · 03-27-2009, 09:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dabull430

Hello to everyone, I work at a restaurant in El Paso and we serve beer, wine, and liquor. An investigator from TABC went to go do an inspection and found one of the TABC stamps on a new bottle of Tequila was slightly peeling off... he asked to see the invoice for the bottle (and by law you have to keep the invoices of all your alcohol on site for the past three years). He also found a bottle of vodka with the stamp barely peeling (like one corner, stamps have to stay on the bottle till the bottles done then the stamp is scratched off).

GM pulled out the invoices, the tequila stamp #(all stamps are numbered) matched an invoice but they couldn't find the invoice for the vodka, so the inspector started gloating and saying "I caught you dude I caught you" to the GM. Inspector confiscated the two bottles and handed the GM a paper saying there was going to be an administrative case filed against the business and takes off without letting the GM have a word.

Gm calls his liquor distributor asking if they could find the invoice for the vodka bottle. They call him 15 minutes later and said the bottle was bought in 01-06...GM then calls the investigator and says he found the invoice, inspector says it's too late now we'll get back to you. TABC called back and set up a meeting.

GM and owner go to meeting and to make a long story short(too late) TABC is accusing owner of refilling the bottle of vodka with cheaper vodka and not reporting the sales. That does happen in many places but here we do not sell high volume of liquor and alot of the bottles have been there a long time. Nevertheless owner is told to pay a fine 0f $6000

or license will be suspended or revoked, not too sure which one.

Can anybody shed some light on this situation?

TABC folks think they can do anything they want. Your employer needs to get a liquor license lawyer. There is a guy in Austin we have used in the past. he worked for TABC as a lawyer for many years and now he fights for the little guy against the establishment. His name is: Dewey Brackin. google him.

good luck. if they don't fight for their rights, TABC will continue to PUSH and PUSH until they loose their license.