online business laws and regulations
Selling alcohol online. What are the UK laws?
Can anyone please point me to some guidance on the rules and regulations of selling alcohol online. I am looking to set-up a business that will be selling the alcohol.
If it helps, I am not looking to sell the alcohol as the main part of my business, instead, I intend to sell them as a supplementary product. For example if you order flowers online you also get offered champagne and chocolates as a supplement…
As already mentioned, supermarkets do it. You can only sell to someone over the age of 18, and it must be delivered to and accepted by a person over the age of 18.
Don’t offer champagne as a supplement to flowers, unless the price of the flowers is substantially higher than the champagne. You are also not allowed to “give away” alcohol to a person under 18, though someone younger than that can legally buy flowers.
In English contract law, there is no such thing as a free give-away. In this case buying the flowers is the price for buying the champagne or the chocolates. This sounds odd, but if I order flowers from you because I think the offer of chocolates makes it worthwhile, if you say “sorry, chocolates are out of stock”, I can sue for them. This has been done many times, where a big company has argued the buyer has given nothing for the freeby. In one case Esso were giving away a “free” coin (which was technically worthless) to anyone buying 4 gallons of petrol. The price was deemed by the court to be the price of 4 gallons of petrol, after Esso tried to get out of it on the grounds the buyer had given nothing for it, so were entitled to nothing.
This emphasises a doctrine of English contract law that something must change hands in each direction, no matter how worthless, or how unequal the value.
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