Alcohol Advertising Laws and Social Media

Read along!!

I love social media and I use platforms like Facebook and Twitter to follow my Favorite bars and restaurants world wide.

I live in the Raleigh/Durham area and I have visited with a lot of restaurant and bar owners to chat about social media. I’m interested what their social media strategy is and how they are using it.

One thing I am frequently told is that they these restaurants would rather save a few bucks and have their bar-person handle their social media rather than hire a social media professional, like myself.

One big problem is that your bar person sometimes ignore the law.

Now, I am not an attorney and I’m certainly not here to give you legal advice.
I’m just saying, you could loose your liquor license if you are not careful.


Here is an excerpt from the North Carolina Alcohol Beverage Control Commission, 2S .1006 General Prohibitions.

1. Cents-off coupons or coupon offerings free alcoholic beverages shall not be used as a method of advertising.
2. No on-premise permittee or his agent shall advertise any drink promotion prohibited by Rule 2S .0232. This paragraph includes a ban on all advertisements of “2 for 1”, “buy 1 get 1 free”, “buy 1 get 1 for a penny, nickel, etc” and any other similar statement indicating that a patron must buy more than one drink.


Before you let your bar-person tweet, consider this: Is it worth it?

I encourage all restaurants and bar owners to read up on your states alcohol advertising laws.