FRANKFORT, Ky. — Restaurants have been allowed to serve alcohol with your carryout or delivery orders since the coronavirus pandemic started.

Senate Bill 67 would make the change permanent.

“Even though people will be going back to restaurants more as it gets safer, they’re still going to be ordering food to go,” said Sen. Morgan McGarvey (D-Louisville). “Takeout was an option before the pandemic as well, and this is something that people just enjoy having with their takeout food.”

McGarvey is a co-sponsor of Senate Bill 67, which passed out of a Senate committee this week with unanimous support.

Sen. John Schickel (R-Union), is the main sponsor, and the bill has support from several other Republicans. Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer (R-Georgetown) supports the proposal, even though he criticized Gov. Andy Beshear’s restaurant restrictions during the committee meeting this week.

“The cocktails-to-go executive order is the one thing that’s helped many of these places stay in business,” Thayer said.

McGarvey said he expects a large amount of support from both parties once the bill hits the floor.

“Most of the time, people focus on the fights up here, but a lot of our bills really pass with bipartisan support, and so once we get kind of past the big political fights of the first week or two, then you start getting to these bills; bills that, you know, in Senator Schickel’s district, he saw restaurants asking for the same thing that the restaurants in my district were asking for, and so you’re able to come together and get some common ground and get a bill going forward.”

Lawmakers also passed a law last year allowing people to buy alcohol straight from the liquor companies themselves online. 

House Republican Adam Koenig sponsored that bill but says some tweaks had to be made.  

His new bill, House Bill 415, cleans the language up to include businesses that use fulfillment centers, which are warehouses owned by a third party designed to help companies ship their goods.

“We’ve encountered several instances of people wanting to get wine from some place they visited in California or Washington state and have been unable because they use fulfillment centers, and that’s their business model,” Koenig said. “And they didn’t want to change it just for Kentucky and they shouldn’t have to, because that’s how it works in most other states.”

Koenig said negotiations are still ongoing with that bill regarding some tax language.

The earliest it could receive a vote on the House floor is next week.