Virtual Alcoholic Beverages License Renewal

About the Program

Category: Community and Economic Development (Best in Category)

Year: 2022

Montgomery County Alcohol Beverage Services’ Division of Licensure, Regulation, and Education (LRE), which is responsible for evaluating renewal applications and issuing renewed alcoholic beverages licenses to more than 1,000 businesses annually, converted the annual license renewal from a primarily in-person process to an entirely virtual process in response to the COVID-19 pandemic by dramatically upgrading its custom-built online renewals portal. New features, including online payment and self-printing of licenses for customers, as well as a comprehensive dashboard for staff, meant that LRE was able to meet legal mandates while also protecting customers and staff from potential exposure to the virus. Although the portal was created to provide contact-less license renewal in response to COVID-19, it ended up producing a faster and more efficient process that has been adopted permanently.