As your social media probably proclaimed to you ad nauseum, yesterday was National Coffee Day. To celebrate, the fun-loving Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC if you’re into the whole brevity thing) raided East Austin’s Cuvee Coffee Bar, confiscating machinery and issuing citations for the cafe’s use of “crowlers”. The eco-friendly aluminum can alternative to growlers for taking beer to-go, crowlers have been the center of a monthslong feud between the two entities, leading Cuvee Coffee head honcho Mike McKim to respond to the TABC in typical Texas fashion with a “come and take it.” And according to Austin360, yesterday they did.
Crowlers occupy a weird gray area in Texas alcohol law. Growlers—typically made of glass—are TABC approved receptacles for beer at non-breweries, whereas the crowler inexplicably is not. On June 25th, the TABC (a kind of literal fun police) told Cuvee they had 30 days to remove the crowler filling machine from the premises. Three months later, the crowler machine was still operational, and the TABC made good on their warning and added an administrative fine to good measure.
(via Instagram)
According to a press release issued by Cuvee shortly after news of the raid began to spread, the violation was expected:
“Our decision to continue using the crowler was driven by our desire to obtain a judicial ruling on our use of the crowler — a decision not uninvited by TABC representatives. As the [TABC] press release acknowledges, we were simply exercising our right to petition the courts for a ruling. That can’t happen until a court obtains jurisdiction over this issue. The violation formally issued by TABC today begins that process. Importantly, it has always been our intention to cease use of the crowler once we received the notice of violation. Now that we have that, we’ll pursue a resolution of the matter with TABC, and the courts, as necessary.”
The fate of the crowler remains unknown as we enter the litigious second act of this canned drama. Common sense says that Cuvee will be victorious; if glass growlers are kosher, it stands to reason that their aluminum counterpart would be as well. But no one has ever accused the TABC of employing common sense, so who knows how it will actually turn out. Pray for Mojo.
Zac Cadwalader is a Sprudge staff writer based in Dallas, Texas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
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