The new Wawa being built on the intersections of South Cedar Crest Boulevard and Chestnut Street will be permitted to sell beer and wine per a inter-municipal liquor license transfer. It was unanimously approved at the July 20 Emmaus Borough Council meeting.

A liquor license transfer means Wawa would move a liquor license from outside the borough to the Wawa. If a borough has more than one license per 3,000 inhabitants, a company must seek to have a previous license transferred over.

“The only way you can deny this is if you have legitimate reason to deny it,” Borough Solicitor Jeffrey Dimmich said.

Dimmich explained the borough would require some kind of articulable reason for denial and not something along the lines of “well I just don’t feel like it.”

Attorney Ellen Freeman, from Flaherty & O’Hara law firm, was at the meeting via Zoom to represent Wawa.

Freeman said there are currently two other Wawa locations in Pennsylvania that have a liquor license, with three more pending a license. She said they have a perfect record, with no citations from the Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement, because of the extensive safety polices at both stores.

The area of the store selling alcohol will carry both cold and warm beer and chilled and warm wine. The area will be under 24 surveillance cameras with signage on all of the doors letting customers know Wawa’s alcohol policy, so there will be no confusion on whether or not you need an ID or whether or not you are permitted to be in the section selling alcohol. Customers will be limited to how much alcohol they can buy per transaction, which is estimated to roughly a 12-pack of beer and four bottles of wine.

There will be no alcohol displayed or sold from the area that sells food and there will be specially designated cash registers that will allow the sale of alcohol. All registers will have signage saying patrons must be 21 years of age to consume alcohol, must purchase alcohol before opening it, cannot open the container and walk around inside or outside of the store and no consumption of alcohol in the parking lot.

Freeman says the locked storage area which holds the beer and wine will only be accessible to employees who are at least 18 years of age (the legal age to sell alcohol), Responsible Alcohol Management Program certified and have gone through the Wawa internal training policies. The same rules apply for any employee selling and running one of the designated registers.

“Wawa has a training procedure in place for anybody that is hired to sell, stock or serve alcohol,” Freeman said. “They’ll go through the policies that are not technically liquor code requirements, but the stricter policy that Wawa puts in place at their stores to ensure that they’re selling alcohol in a responsible manner.”

Some of the policies include the limit the amount of alcohol a person can purchase and consume on the premises, carding 100 percent of patrons regardless of age and using the card scanner transaction device for every purchase to confirm the ID is not fraudulent. Training also goes through how to de-escalate a situation if an employee decides they cannot make a sale and dealing with intoxicated patrons.

While Wawa is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, per state law, alcohol sales can only run 7 a.m. to 2 a.m. Monday through Saturday and 9 a.m. to 2 a.m. Sunday. Wine sales will cease 11 p.m. Wawa plans on programming registers to ensure there are no sales out of that time frame by locking associates out of scanning any SKUs related to liquor items.

Per the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, any business that has a restaurant liquor license must allow their customers to consume alcohol on premise, which is why Wawa will have a sit down area that can fit up to 30 people inside. If a patron wants to order food and consume a can of unopened beer they purchased they will be able to sit in that area.

The area will be under a 24-hour surveillance camera and Wawa will be enforcing a policy of only one beer allowed with a meal. Wawa has the right to ask a patron to leave if they attempt to consume more than one beer and will get law enforcement involved if necessary.

“Wawa has a very strong regional following and they have a very strong reputation in all of the communities they represent, so they are very aware that they cannot come into a community or municipality and operate at a haphazard manner and tarnish that reputation,” Freeman said.

In other business, council voted 5-2 in favor of holding the community garage sale Sept. 12 with the following recommended precautions: no family yard sales, no sharing or combining of households, if possible a limitation on handling of goods, encouraging one way tracking of sales tables, no indoor sales such as garages or basements and the encouragement to wear masks and social distance.

Councilman John Hart and Councilwoman Shana Baumgartner voted against holding it due to the various circumstances surrounding the current pandemic. Concerns they both had included the handling of items and safety for residents. Baumgartner also expressed that it would be difficult to enforce any mandates on a community-wide scale including sanitation measures.