Lt. Governor Visits Avon

Avon mayor said Monday that he is hopeful Ohio Lt. Governor Mary Taylor can help re-write state liquor laws to help  Custom Culinary in Avon.

Taylor visited the city on Monday and toured the Custom Culinary plant on Avon Commerce Parkway. Custom Culinary makes gravies, sauces, and bases for the foodservice industry.

But Ohio's cork laws mean the company cannot buy the wines, beer and liquor it uses to make its products from wholesalers and cannot buy large containers, Smith said.

"They have to buy retail, and use man hours to open individual bottles and pour (the alcoholic beverages) into special containers," Smith said. "The largest container of beer they can get are those small pony kegs. It's ridiculous."

Smith said he'd been trying for years to get the state to change its liquor laws to allow businesses like Custom Culinary be able to get beer, wine and liquor wholesale and in industrial-sized containers.

"No wholesaler will sell to an Ohio business," Smith said. "Because, under Ohio law, they'd be bootlegging."

Taylor came to Avon at Smith's invitation, to see how Custom Culinary could be helped under Governor John Kasich's Common Sense Initiative, which Taylor is running. The Common Sense Initiative was created to look at business regulation and job growth.

Custom Culinary's parent company, Illinois-based Griffith Laboratories, is looking at expanding, Smith said. The only way the Avon facility has a shot at getting that expansion is to update the liquor laws, he said.

"I wonder how many other companies like this wouldn't even look at Ohio because of the laws," Smith said.