Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2020 | 2:07 p.m.
The Las Vegas City Council is considering a bill that would allow businesses to contract with third-party services to deliver alcoholic beverages to customers.
"Somebody could call a bar and order two martinis," said Mayor Pro Tem Stavros Anthony, who introduced the bill this week.
It could allow some small businesses to survive, he said.
Under current rules, business owners must establish an in-house system for alcohol deliveries, which could be difficult for some smaller businesses because of the expense, Anthony said.
If the bill passes, businesses could contract with delivery companies like GrubHub, Instacart or Doordash to deliver alcohol to their customers.
The council has not set a date to vote on the bill, but Anthony said he hopes it passes in January.
After some pushback from the resort industry, Anthony said the bill would be adjusted to prohibit deliveries to hotels and casinos.
"We're going to massage it a bit," he said. "We want to get it right."
Virginia Valentine, who heads the Nevada Resort Association, said the bill would create an extra burden for resort operators.
"Besides for the need to increase our security staff to limit such deliveries, we would become responsible for any on-site consumption of alcoholic beverages over which we have zero control," Valentine wrote in a letter to Mayor Carolyn Goodman.
Erin McMullen Midby, vice president of government affairs for Boyd Gaming, said there would be no limit on how much alcohol customers could have delivered.
They could have alcohol delivered with no restrictions to the Fremont Street Experience and surrounding resorts, said Midby, who called it an “unacceptable scenario.”
