Before an applicant can apply for an on-premises license, the applicant must first understand the licensing process. Applicants report a need for clarity in local procedures, hearing requirements, and notice rules; access to more data, including license availability and cost; identified contacts for assistance during the process; and language support.184
Since the state does not specify what information and data should be provided, municipalities maintain their own website content, and what an applicant finds online varies in format and depth from one municipality to the next. A sample of municipal websites was reviewed to see what that variation looks like in practice, including the websites of the Commonwealth’s three most populous municipalities, Boston (quota municipality), Springfield (quota municipality), and Worcester (local-control municipality), as well as the websites of Southwick and Palmer—two quota municipalities with under 20,000 residents and no quota All-Alcohol licenses remaining.185
Boston’s website includes a step-by-step application guide, hearing schedules, advisories, licensing materials in seven languages, and a downloadable dataset of active licenses with locations.186 See Figure 24 on the next page.
Figure 24. City of Boston Licensing Board Website187
Springfield, also a quota municipality, gives applicants a clear starting point with downloadable PDF guides to each license type and its License Commission rules and directs applicants to the state website for additional information.188 See Figure 25 on the next page.
Figure 25. City of Springfield Licensing Board Website189
Worcester’s website provides links to the state website and a permit center that users can contact for assistance.190 It also publishes public notice requirements, rules and regulations, a contact address for reporting concerns, and its most recently updated count of issued licenses (even though, as a local-control municipality, its on-premises licenses are not limited by the state-imposed population-based quota).191 See Figure 26 below and Figure 27 on the next page.
Figure 26. City of Worcester Licensing Board Website192
Figure 27. City of Worcester Licensing Board Website193
Southwick and Palmer, two quota municipalities with fewer than 20,000 residents, which have issued every All-Alcohol license the formula allocates, illustrate the position of smaller municipalities for which the licensing function sits with a general-purpose board rather than a dedicated licensing office. Southwick’s Select Board website provides applications for one-day licenses, and Palmer’s License Commission page provides one-day license guidelines.194 See Figure 28 on the next page.
Figure 28. Licensing websites of Southwick and Palmer195
Municipalities that lack information technology staff members or other resources would benefit from a statewide database that could deliver helpful information to prospective licensees, such as live license data, which is particularly relevant for constrained quota municipalities or municipalities with a high number of special legislation licenses. Respondents to the DLM survey indicate that continuously updated license data should be more readily available.196 Helpful, live license data that could be standardized and centrally collected at the state level includes a map of where issued licenses are located; names of license holders and businesses; types of licenses; classifications of businesses; history and current statuses of licenses; available licenses with information about restrictions, if any; license acquisition costs; and all other information available to ABCC. Moreover, the state does not currently provide website content standards regarding liquor licensing that would benefit potential licensees weighing where to invest, including waiting lists for available licenses, timeline data, municipal contacts, and all other relevant local information.
The website examples show that prospective licensees may encounter very different online informational environments depending on the municipality because there is limited statewide data and no state standardization for website content. Interviews show how these variations in informational environments make the licensing process person-dependent. Complex processes, incomplete written guidance, and a lack of live license data create information asymmetry where some prospective licensees are advantaged by connections with those in the know, such as municipal staff members, ABCC staff members, attorneys, and industry insiders.
When processes are not adequately documented, prospective licensees who lack those connections must rely on whoever will pick up the phone—peers, a helpful clerk, or an industry lawyer. A licensee in Quincy said his most useful guidance came from peers who had been through licensing before and from a city administrative assistant he praised as exactly what a municipal employee should be; he added that ABCC materials exist but remain hard to sort through and would be even harder to sort through for someone navigating the process in a second language.197
Language access compounds these municipal-level barriers. A municipal employee in Lawrence described the need for plain-language guidance and Spanish-language materials, noting that existing materials do not always translate clearly.198 Without plain-language guidance accurately translated, applicants with limited English proficiency may face additional barriers in understanding the sequence of steps, documentation requirements, the hearing process, notice obligations, and available licensing pathways.
Relationship dependence also affects prospective licensees when no license is currently available. Applicants are faced with navigating the difficult pathways of a home rule petition or purchasing a license on the secondary market, as discussed in Finding 4. Without connections to industry insiders, some prospective licensees lack information on how to initiate a home rule petition at the municipal level or how to identify potential licenses for sale, including pocket licenses.199 A Cambridge restaurant owner described the resale market as a small circle of repeat players–“the same lawyers and brokers appear repeatedly”—in which industry insiders are often successful in reacquiring a license when a restaurant fails, while newcomers may have no way to learn when licenses might quietly change hands.200
A lack of clear, consistent, complete, public, and digitized information and live data that can be easily and correctly translated into multiple languages exacerbates the financial barriers identified in Finding 4 and prevents equitable access to the system.
| Date published: | October 13, 2026 |
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