Responsible Service of Alcohol

Topic 4. RSA strategies

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4.6 Preventing secondary sales

A ‘second party sale’ occurs when alcohol is purchased and then supplied to a minor. The licensee, staff, and other patrons, including minors (where liquor is supplied to other minors) can all be liable.

Let’s look at the actions staff can take to prevent secondary sales.

waiter asking for ID

It is an offence to buy or obtain liquor on behalf of a person who is under 18. Licensees must display prescribed signs within their venue warning of age restrictions and penalties.

It is often difficult to establish the occurrence of secondary sales, therefore considerable care must be taken by staff to identify the signs such as repeat orders to ensure that alcohol is not served to or purchased by minors.

Guy Strang

Guy Strang

Guy Strang, Licensee, tells how his staff watch for purchasing patterns to prevent secondary sales of alcohol to minors.

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To prevent secondary sales—when you’ve been in the game long enough you’ll tend to notice the patterns—patterns being lots of $5 and $10 notes, silly drinks like Passion Pop, RTDs, alcopops, cask wines. You know, kids that come in shaking, that’s always the best one, if they come in and they’re doing this and they’ve got a fistful of $5 and $10 notes. ‘ID, please’ and then they show you the ID and then I’ll generally get one of the junior guys to finish the service and I’ll walk out the front and have a quick look to see what’s around, so before he even walks out the door I can say ‘Stop, here’s your money back, see you later’ and it works every time. They’re always within 20 metres of the front door.

In NSW adults cannot give permission for alcohol to be sold or served to minors. Care must be taken to ensure that minors, in the company of a responsible adult, are not supplied with alcohol.

Watch how a waiter handles a request by a father to serve alcohol to his son who does not have appropriate evidence of age.

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