Solid meh. This is the same drama that accompanied eliminating restrictions on bottle size to keep European beer out of the Florida market. The barriers fall eventually: brush wars get fought, fights break out, cops get called, finger prints get taken, it gets done in the end. Been involved in the process in one form or another since the early 80s. The craft brewing industry needs to get its act together and work our "jobs governor" and skip the small shit. You invite him to new brewery openings so he can take credit for jobs he didn't create then hit him up to help the entrepreneurial spirit, blah, blah, blah.
Only one senator, Latvala, voted against the bill. I watched the whole thing. That dumb bitch Kelli Stargel had the audacity to say that the bill and the amendment to say that they were "helping" the craft brewers by eliminating the come to rest portion of the bill which means the distributors can avoid picking up any product from the brewery in able to sell it back to them.
What a crock of shit. She claims that it "levels the playing field" for the vendors. Bull shit it does. All it does is force breweries to pay protection to the distributors so they have the ability to sell their own ####ing product. It's legalized organized crime. And lets talk about the level playing field. Vendors don't have the overhead associated with manufacturing the product, they don't have the high labor costs, they don't have to invest in hundreds of thousands of dollars in equipment to create the product. All they have to have is a store front and shelf space. Overhead is minimal except for material cost. Level playing field my ass. In no other industry does a company have to sell it's products like that.
And if you think this is going away you have your head in the sand. These lobbyists are paid to do this 24 hours a day. If you think they will just give up then you are sorely mistaken. The only way to win this war is to go after the three tier system and take it out once and for all and put in some regulations that make sense. Distributors are not going to go bankrupt. They won't even see a hitch in their balance sheet. We still need distributors. We don't need stupid archaic laws that will hurt small craft brewers and make Florida a less attractive state for tourism.