Brentwood Aims To Tame Unruly Sunday Booze Rules

BRENTWOOD, TN -- Picture this: it's Sunday, January 6, 2019, and someone in Brentwood wants a drink. For the sake of argument, let's say it's a mimosa.

Our hypothetical Brentwooder heads to the grocery store and grabs some orange juice and heads to the wine aisle - statewide Sunday grocery store wine sales begin January 1, 2019 - and grabs a bottle of bubbly. It's 10 a.m., so the purchase is perfectly legal. But our Sunday boozer decides that OJ might partner better with the Champagne of Beers instead of champagne. No can do, Imaginary Brentwood Drinker: Brentwood stores can't sell beer until noon Sundays.

Had the drinkseeker gone instead to a liquor store, both wine and beer (and anything stronger, for that matter) could be sold at 10 a.m. If our Would-Be Sunday Funday Participant decided to have brunch at a restaurant instead, nothing boozy could be sold until noon.

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It's enough to give a person a headache, or at least inspire some kind of flowchart (or a trip across Old Hickory Boulevard into Davidson County, where everything is available everywhere at 10 on Sunday). Thankfully, Brentwood city staff are pushing the city commission to line things up before this morass of hypotheticals becomes a reality on New Year's Day.

As it stands, under state law, liquor stores - which can now sell all manner of alcohol - can open at 10 a.m. Sundays and in January, grocery stores can join them in selling wine at 10 a.m. But under local Brentwood laws, grocery stores can't sell beer until noon, which is also when restaurants and bars can begin serving.

At a June 7 meeting, city staff recommended making beer, wine and liquor available at 10 a.m. Sundays throughout Brentwood at grocery stores, liquor stores, restaurants and bars. The city's attorney told The Tennessean it's all to ease the above-outlined confusion (and, perhaps, to capture lost tax revenue from confounded drinkers who surrender and drive into Metro).

There's no timetable for when the commission might take up the proposal.

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