Food & Beverage

Ogden Glazer + Schaefer is a proud affiliate member of the Wisconsin Brewers Guild and the Wisconsin Winery Association

Wisconsin is one of the best places in the world for food and beverage companies. Agriculture is a cornerstone of our economy, and value-added agriculture is central to the continued development of the industry. We believe in sustainable and regenerative agriculture; we believe in sustainable and regenerative businesses. We not only believe in your triple bottom line, but we believe in ours, too.

beer

Wisconsin is synonymous with beer; our clients include numerous breweries, wineries, meaderies, distilleries, and alcohol-producers of all types. Our attorneys are recognized experts in state and federal alcohol regulation (article: A Web of Regulations: Starting a Brewery). We can make sure you get help with your brewery, winery, or spirits permits and licenses and get through your label or recipe approvals. We work regularly with the TTB, DOR, and municipalities to get your product in front of customers.

Producers, Distributors, Retailers
Recipes, Trademarks, Package Design
Label Approval and Guidance
Regulatory Compliance
Federal, State, Local Licensing
Agriculture and Real Estate

Our Food and Beverage Practice

If you are a retailer looking for an on-premise or off-premise beer, wine, or liquor license we can help with that, too.

We even work with distributors to help find and secure their locations and all of the licenses necessary to get product out to market.

We aren’t just beverages though. We help food entrepreneurs of all stripes with services spanning startup packages for putting your team together to asset purchase agreements when you are ready to find your next passion. We have negotiated distribution and wholesale agreements, contract production agreements, alternating proprietorship and custom crush agreements, and any of the numerous other ways you might find yourself doing business. We’ve worked with farm, processing, wholesale, and retail clients on cannabis and related products including CBD and other cannabis derivatives.

Our attorneys know farms. In our agricultural practice we work with your farm to protect your valuable assets and real estate, help you finance your production and growth, and move your value-added production on-site. 

Recent Blog Posts about Food and Beverage

Cheers to Change: The New Wis. Stat. 125 – Changes for Wedding Barns & Other Venues - I suppose this blog post could be called “All Good Things Must Come to an End.” As part of our series on the changes to Wis. Stat. 125 under Assembly Bill 304 (“AB304“), today we are focusing on some big changes coming down the pipeline for wedding barns and other wedding venues. Read on for ... Read more
Bottles Up - As a firm of trademark and alcohol attorneys, it’s always a thrill when those two topics collide, especially on a major stage. We had one of those great moments of serendipity last week. The story begins with Diageo, the company that owns Bulleit Frontier Whiskey, a brand of whiskey that might be familiar to our ... Read more
Cheers to Change: The New Wis. Stat. 125 – Contract Manufacturing - 02/15/24 Update: A previous version of this post mentioned that product produced under a Contract Production agreement (#2 below) could be counted towards a Host’s total production volume for the purposes of Full Service Retail sale privileges under the new statute, that is not the case. Product produced under a contract production agreement\recipe brewing agreement ... Read more
Cheers to Change: The New Wis. Stat. 125 – Full Service Retail - The landscape of Wisconsin’s alcoholic beverage regulations has recently undergone substantial changes with the revision of Wis. Stat. Chapter 125. In this post we will be discussing one of the most substantial changes, specifically, the ability of breweries, wineries, and distilleries to offer beer, wine, and spirits (“full service retail” under the new statute) at ... Read more
Contract Distilling? Sure, We Can Do That! - Friday May 12, 2023 was a big day here at the office. Thanks to the efforts of City Brewing and Wisconsin Brewing Company, the Department of Revenue issued a declaratory ruling that approved contract production (through Alternating Proprietorships, or straight contract) between distilleries (and by extension and our reading of the statute, wineries too). This ... Read more
From Pixel Bay My Gin Was Made From Vodka? - This post is about Chapter 4 of the Distilled Spirits Beverage Alcohol Manual (“BAM“). The BAM is the classification guide the Alcohol Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (“TTB“) will use to classify a distilled spirits product into a category (whisky, gin, vodka etc.) depending on its formula. This post is pretty short, but pretty nerdy. ... Read more