TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida’s craft breweries are making it a goal to grow the industry, and to do that, that they’ll need legislative support.
Matthew Dahm, legislative chair for the Florida Brewers Guild, gave some examples of the group's efforts.
"Better structuring license fee, better way of taxing, creating a little bit normalization and terminology. Even after brand registration on how we have to register our brands for when we distribute our products and how we work with the DBPR. Just things that will make our lives easier," said Dahm.
Preben Olsen works at Aardwolf brewery company and a board member for the Florida Brewers Guild and he explains what’s behind these initiatives.
“As we grow as an industry, we need the laws to kind of change and reflect that and were asking for some give and takes in kind of defining who we are, said Olsen.
There are over 380 craft breweries which provide 25,000 jobs with about 5,750 directly in craft breweries and brew pubs within the state.
“This isn’t really just a craft beer bill on a whole, but it’s also an entrepreneurial type right to work agenda items that are allowing the craft beer industry to do that have the right to work and have all the tools to work successfully," said Dahm.
Dahm says Monday they will be heading to Tallahassee and Tuesday they will be in front of elected officials.