Naperville on Starbucks beer, wine: Let's wait six months

Does a cold one or a glass of vino belong on a Starbucks menu?

In Naperville, liquor commissioners are skeptical — at least, for now.

“I'm really torn,” Mayor and Liquor Commissioner Steve Chirico said Thursday.

The coffee giant known for tongue-twister orders — “Venti skim soy latte, please” — wants to offer something simpler, but still with a kick, at its store in the Fox Run Square shopping center on Naper Boulevard: beer and wine.

The commission on Thursday decided to revisit the chain's bid in six months to give the city time to study how similar businesses view the concept and how the rollout of “Starbucks Evenings” fares elsewhere.

The city would have to create a new type of liquor license to allow Starbucks to sell alcohol. Currently, the city requires full kitchens and full menus under the relevant licenses, and Starbucks doesn't have either.

In Naperville, there are 30 coffeehouses and more than 20 dessert shops. How many would qualify for such a license — permitting them to sell beer and wine with only small bites — would depend on whether the liquor commission, and later the city council, adopts restrictions, city attorney Kavita Athanikar said. Naperville could cap the number of such licenses, she said, among other possible rules:

• 90 percent of the sales revenue would come from coffee, food and/or dessert.

• Customers would have to buy food with any beer or wine.

• Stores would be at least 1,500 square feet.

• Beer and wine would be sold during certain hours.

Chirico acknowledged his mixed feelings on the idea. He said that in general, business owners should be able to run with their business model.

“At the same time, this is such a small percentage of their overall sales, and the fact that it opens up a fairly significant list of additional coffeehouses in the area, I almost feel like why create this influx of new applicants for such a minimal potential gain,” Chirico said.

On a “banner, gangbusters” day, eight to 12 units of alcohol would be sold off the Starbucks Evenings menu, district managers have told attorney Harlan Powell, who represented the company before the city's liquor commission.

“So why do it?” asked Commissioner Diana Williams.

Alcohol is “not meant to be a driver of sales,” Powell said, and baristas won't be pushing it.

“Really what we're looking to do is drive food sales during a point of day where typically sales are flat,” he said.

The Starbucks Evenings menu is not your typical coffeehouse fare. Small plates of truffle mac and cheese, bacon-wrapped dates, and chicken sausage and mushroom flatbread are meant to be paired with craft beer or red, white and sparkling wine.

Selling alcohol at Starbucks also is not new. In 2012, Starbucks Evenings launched in the suburbs in Schaumburg.

But the company is past the pilot phase and is bringing beer and wine to stores at an “accelerated” pace, based on licensing applications handled by his law firm, Powell said. If it gets the Naper Boulevard license, the company would eventually expand alcohol sales to six of its 12 Naperville stores.

“We don't need to be a leader here,” Commissioner Joe Vozar said. “I would recommend that we sit back and have some patience and watch how this rolls out around the area, around the country, learn from it.”

Williams said she worries that there aren't enough employees and eyes on underage customers (Starbucks is proposing two employees during the hours it sells alcohol).

And Commissioner Scott Wehrli said he wants to hear input from other license holders — restaurant owners who have made “significant investments into their kitchens and product and their workforce to deliver and earn the right kind of liquor license” allowing them to sell hard liquor (Starbucks isn't seeking that).

“I can only imagine that some of them would probably not be very happy,” he said.