✦Journal · Film

Can your restaurant still sell wine with takeaway orders?

TS
TableSpark Editorial
1 min · 27 October 2026

Can your restaurant still sell wine with takeaway and delivery orders without changing its licence? During the COVID-19 pandemic, regulations let licensed businesses sell alcohol for takeaway, delivery and to drink in licensed pavement areas without changing their licence, and those regulations expired on 31 March 2025. Selling alcohol for takeaway, for delivery, or to drink in a licensed pavement area is now authorised by the premises licence, or it is not authorised. Carrying on a licensable activity otherwise than under and in accordance with an authorisation is an offence under section 136 of the Licensing Act 2003, with a statutory maximum of six months' imprisonment, a fine, or both: a ceiling, not a typical outcome. List every alcohol line you publish, mark each one against the licence, and withdraw or re-scope the same day. England and Wales. Not legal advice.

What the film covers

Questions the film answers

My premises licence was granted years ago. Does it authorise off-sales?

Only the document can answer that. What is settled is the general position: the section 11 concession that allowed off-sales without a licence change ended on 31 March 2025 and nothing has extended it, so the authorisation has to come from the premises licence itself. What that licence authorises is a matter of what is written on it, and your licensing authority is the place to go if the wording is unclear.

Is a restaurant with wine on its takeaway page committing an offence?

Not by virtue of having wine on the page. Section 136 makes it an offence to carry on a licensable activity "otherwise than under and in accordance with an authorisation", so the question is entirely whether the sale sits inside what the licence authorises. Many restaurants will check and find that it does. The point of checking is to know, not to assume in either direction.

What exactly happened on 31 March 2025?

The temporary off-sales permission ended: it was created by section 11 of the Business and Planning Act 2020, and section 11(10)(d) closes its relevant period on the date the provision carries, 31 March 2025. The legislation.gov.uk entry records "currently no known outstanding effects" for section 11 and lists 28/09/2023 as the most recent amending version, so nothing has extended it. Since then the position is the one that applied before the concession: selling alcohol for takeaway, for delivery, or in a licensed pavement area is authorised by the premises licence, or it is not authorised. What your own licence authorises is still a matter of what is written on it.

Does the age verification condition apply to an order placed online?

The Mandatory Licensing Conditions Order 2010 requires the premises licence holder to ensure an age verification policy applies to the premises in relation to the sale or supply of alcohol, and that the policy require anyone who appears to the responsible person to be under 18, "or such older age as may be specified in the policy", to produce photographic identification before being served. How that policy handles a screen order and a doorstep handover is a matter for the restaurant's own policy and its licensing authority. It's worth resolving before the first delivery goes out rather than after.

Should I take the whole drinks section down while I work through this?

That's a commercial judgement for the restaurant; this article does not advise on it. What is worth separating is the three piles from step two: lines the licence clearly authorises, lines it clearly does not, and lines you cannot tell about. Those deserve three different decisions, and collapsing them into one blanket action usually costs a restaurant revenue it was entitled to take.

Read the full articleYour takeaway page still sells wine. Check the premises licence still covers off-sales.For a few years it was simply true that a licensed restaurant could put a bottle of wine on its takeaway page without going anywhere near its premises licence, and that is what makes this one worth ten minutes of your evening. Carrying on a licensable activity on or from any premises otherwise than under and in accordance with an authorisation is an offence under section 136 of the Licensing Act 2003, and a person guilty of it is liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine, or to both. That's the statutory maximum the Act makes available, not a typical outcome, not a prediction about your restaurant, and it reaches only a sale that genuinely sits outside what the licence authorises. The trigger is unglamorous. Somebody built a delivery page in the middle of the pandemic, house red went on it next to the lasagne, and nobody has opened that page since. The page has not changed; the permission underneath it has. During the COVID-19 pandemic the government passed regulations allowing licensed businesses to sell alcohol for takeaway, delivery and to drink in licensed pavement areas, called off-sales on the government's own consultation page, without changing their licence, and those regulations expired on 31 March 2025. The expensive version of finding this out is never a courtroom. It's a licensing officer asking your duty manager a question nobody in the building can answer, a drinks line pulled mid-service while three of those orders sit in the kitchen, guests phoned back about a bottle that was on the site an hour ago, and a week of your own time spent reconstructing what the licence says instead of running covers. So the decision here is narrow. Read your premises licence, check what it authorises today, and reconcile that against the drinks on your published ordering page, so you know whether anything needs to be withdrawn or re-scoped, or whether the honest answer is that nothing does.
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