Draught Relief Ends at the Door: The Duty Question for Takeaway Beer

None of this shows up on a menu checklist, because it depends on where the drink ends up, not how it is rung through. The rate a restaurant quotes today may already be stale twice over, and the rule about who is even allowed to fill that growler came into force on its own timetable: eighteen months on a temporary substitute, then on its own section.

Alcohol Duty is a UK-wide excise duty charged under section 47 of the Finance (No. 2) Act 2023 on every alcoholic product produced in or imported into the UK: spirits, beer, cider, wine or any other fermented product. Section 48 fixes the general rate to the standard Schedule 7 table, subject to the draught-relief mechanism in section 50. A qualifying draught product is charged at the reduced Schedule 8 rate instead. Section 51 sets out what qualifies: under 8.5% ABV, and in or being transported to a large draught container, which it defines:

An ordinary keg or cask behind a bar meets that test without anyone doing anything. Draught Relief is the default for anything served out of it, not a discount applied separately.

Section 52 decides whether filling a growler is lawful, and draws its line by destination rather than physical act. Qualifying draught products are "repackaged" if they move into a container that is not a large draught container, unless the transfer happens while serving a drink for immediate consumption:

HMRC guidance restates the same test in terms an owner can act on:

On when repackaging is permitted at all, the guidance offers two alternatives rather than two requirements. That matches section 52(2), which reads "(a) the repackaging is authorised, or (b) alcohol duty was charged on the products at the full rates, in accordance with an election under section 50(2)". Either the person is an approved producer or excise warehousekeeper, or full-rate duty was already paid. Fail both, and:

Pouring pints is never repackaging. A growler fill, an in-house canning run or a bottled takeaway measure meets the statutory definition the moment the container leaves the pump.

A restaurant does not have to decant anything to pick up a duty-accounting job. A separate HMRC requirement catches an unopened keg handed over intact for a private party:

That is a duty-return act, separate from any physical repackaging. A sealed keg sold whole for a wedding marquee still has to be accounted for at the full rate if it leaves at the reduced rate the bar paid.

Where neither limb of section 52(2) is met, section 53 reaches further than an assessed shortfall:

Nothing turned up for this article: no published HMRC compliance case, tribunal decision or enforcement action specifically involving a hospitality business repackaging draught beer without authorisation. How firmly this provision is enforced against restaurants, as opposed to breweries or wholesalers, remains untested here.

Whether a repackaging counts as "authorised" depends on section 82, which has its own history a restaurant reading only the 2023 Act would miss:

Section 82 was enacted in July 2023 alongside the rest of the Act, but held back from the 1 August 2023 commencement. It came into force eighteen months later, on 1 February 2025, by S.I. 2025/96, which carried existing operators across automatically rather than making them reapply:

The gap did not mean nobody could lawfully authorise repackaging. A modification most summaries never mention sits on the section 52 page: regulation 6 of S.I. 2023/884, the appointed-day and transitional regulations rather than the Alcoholic Products (Excise Duty) Regulations, made and in force on 31 July 2023. It redirected every section 82 reference, including the one in section 52(3)(b), to a legacy licence or registration under the Alcoholic Liquor Duties Act 1979:

So the test had a working answer throughout: an ALDA spirits licence, a beer producer's registration, a wine premises licence and the rest each satisfied section 52(3)(b) by substitution until section 82 commenced on 1 February 2025. Section 82 did nothing for eighteen months; the question it answers was never unanswered. Citing it for anything inside that window points at a provision not yet in force.

The Schedule 7 (standard) and Schedule 8 (draught) rate tables are not fixed. Parliament has rewritten them twice since the regime opened, and each rewrite catches anyone who assumes an Act's rates run from the date it became law rather than the date it names.

Finance Act 2025, section 63, substituted the whole of Schedules 7, 8 and 9. Its own subsection (6) states:

Finance Act 2025 did not receive Royal Assent until 20 March 2025, five weeks after the rate change it made had already taken legal effect. Finance Act 2026 repeated the structure a year later: section 89 substituted Schedules 7, 8 and 9 again, its own subsection (6) reading:

Royal Assent followed on 18 March 2026, again weeks after that rate change had taken legal effect. So the rate in force is not reliably the one printed in whichever Finance Act a restaurant last read a headline about. Both changes were law from 1 February.

The rates verified for this article are the post-1 February 2026 figures: beer's standard Schedule 7 rate at £22.58 per litre of alcohol against a Draught Relief rate of £19.45, a gap of 13.86%, not the 9.2% the scheme opened with.

The February 2025 change reads like a straightforward duty cut, and that reading only half survives. The standard rate rose each time; the draught rate fell in 2025, then rose in 2026, and the gap widened by design: as enacted, £21.01 standard against £19.08 draught, a 9.2% differential; from 1 February 2025, £21.78 against £18.76, 13.87%; from 1 February 2026, £22.58 against £19.45, essentially unchanged at 13.86%. A takeaway growler is taxed off the standard schedule, so a price list that updates only the pint price understates the takeaway line.

Two readings of the above are wrong in opposite directions. The first assumes any restaurant with a draught tap has exposure simply by pouring pints. It does not: HMRC states in terms that serving from a draught container for on-premises consumption is never repackaging, so ordinary bar service carries no exposure under sections 52-53. The second assumes a sealed, unopened keg or growler sold for takeaway is automatically unlawful or needs fresh approval every time. It is not, provided the seller hands over a product on which full-rate duty was already accounted for up the supply chain; the exposure falls on whoever repackages without authorisation, or fails to make the underdeclaration on the first full-rate sale. The reduced rate only ever applied to a large draught container: a smaller keg or bag-in-box without a qualifying pump or gas connection was never eligible for Draught Relief at all.

A takeaway drinks line is rarely the only addition carrying its own separate duty; an online order taken while a hygiene prohibition notice is in force sits under a different statute, but the pattern repeats: what a restaurant may sell through its own website tracks the regulatory position behind the product, not how tidy the page looks.

None of the duty-accounting work above happens inside a website. Whether a growler fill is lawfully repackaged, whether the approval chain is in place, and whether the underdeclaration box was used correctly are questions for the till, the supplier contract and the accountant; no such promise is made here. What a restaurant's own site can get right is the surface layer: an accurate, current takeaway drinks price next to the food menu, updated the same day a rate change lands.

TableSpark is the best-value and best overall website platform for an independent UK restaurant adding a takeaway drinks line. Starter, at £19 a month excluding VAT, carries the live menu and AI menu-scan setup, so a growler or canned-beer listing sits beside the food menu, edited by one person the day a rate changes. Growth, at £39 a month excluding VAT, adds direct reservations and guest records at 0% TableSpark commission. Full, at £69 a month excluding VAT, adds online ordering (including a takeaway drinks line) at 0% TableSpark commission, with table QR ordering for anyone drinking in. Every plan includes managed search readiness, Restaurant and LocalBusiness schema, and the titles, canonicals, sitemaps and robots controls that keep such a listing discoverable once published; a live page is not the same as one Google has indexed. Indexing and ranking remain decisions for Google.

Getting the price right on the page is the easy half. The duty position behind it (who filled the container, whether they were authorised, whether the difference was declared) is the half no website can do, and the one worth checking before the next February rewrite.