Getting Ready For The 2026 License Renewal

In this episode, we break down how to renew your Michigan liquor license in the upcoming liquor license renewal period that starts on March 1, 2026.  We discuss club certifications and brewer barrel counts, MILogin pitfalls, payment timing, escrow rules, triennial renewals for Salesperson licenses, and the new tools that make printing licenses faster.

Links Discussed In This Episode:

1. MLCC Renewal Portal Link: https://www.michigan.gov/lara/bureau-list/lcc/renewal
2. For more information on or to register for the Michigan Craft Beverage Summit, please visit the Craft Beverage Council's website at MichiganCraftBeverage.com
3. Commission Approved Salesperson Accreditation Programs:

• Michigan Salesperson License Accreditation Program - mbwwasaleslicense.org

Program managed by Michigan Beer & Wine Wholesalers Association - Phone: 517-482-5555 ext. 215

• Michigan Brewers Guild’s Michigan Salesperson License Accreditation Program - https://www.mibeer.com/Training/Home

Program managed by Michigan Brewers Guild - Phone: 517-327-5004

The MLCC On The Road podcast is brought to you by the Michigan Liquor Control Commission (MLCC).  For more information on the MLCC, please visit our website at www.michigan.gov/lcc.  To submit a question or idea for a podcast topic, please email mlccinfo2@michigan.gov.

The mission of the Michigan Liquor Control Commission is to make alcoholic beverages available for consumption while protecting the consumer and the general public through regulation of those involved in the sale and distribution of these alcohol beverage products.

Transcript

Craft Beverage Summit Announcement

David Marvin 0:00

You're listening to the MLCC On the Road Podcast, brought to you by the Michigan Liquor Control Commission with hosts Sarah Weber and David Marvin. Well, welcome back to the MLCC on the road podcast. And before we get started here today, I wanted to give a little bit of information about an upcoming event that we would encourage folks to attend. It's called the Michigan Craft Beverage Summit. It's occurring Monday, March 23rd through Wednesday, March 25th of this year, 2026. It'll be held at the Delta Hotels in Muskegon. And the Michigan Craft Beverage Summit is hosted by the Michigan Kraft Beverage Council, a partner of ours in the industry here in Michigan. And the summit will bring together over 300 Michigan Kraft Beverage producers, suppliers, and retailers to learn about trends in the industry at a number of informative sessions and to network with other businesses at this three-day event. The MLCC on the road team looks forward to participating in the summit, and we hope to see you there. For more information on or to register for the Michigan Craft Beverage Summit, please visit the Craft Beverage Council's website at MichiganCraftBerage.com. And that's all one word, no spaces in between the words. So MichiganCraftBeverage.com. And a link to the website will also be included in the notes for this episode. And with that, I would like to uh welcome back Sarah Weber. And I'm David Marvin, and we're going to talk a little bit about the annual license renewal, which is just mere days away from the time that we're recording this. And that is probably one of our busiest times of the year, and probably one of the few times that we really interact with every licensee we have out there. And this year, actually, we get to interact with every licensee because the triennial licenses that only come up uh once every three years have to be renewed this year. So it's gonna be a busy, uh, busy time in the next couple months here, uh Sarah. And so let's talk about what that means to the people who are listening and and those uh licensees out there that need to renew. And I'll put this in here, just so everybody understands the size and the scope of what we do here. Last renewal we renewed over 45,000, that's 45,000 licenses and nearly 80,000 permits. So that is a lot of work that needs to be done uh in the next couple of months here as we get going on this. And so, Sarah, let's talk about renewal this year.

Sara Weber 2:32

We have a lot of new things, new features coming out for this year, but we also have several housekeeping reminders that we want to make sure everyone is aware of. Specifically, we have some housekeeping items for our club licensees and our manufacturers. And David, did you want to speak about those items really quick?

Non-Liquor Housekeeping That Can Block You

David Marvin 2:49

So, club licensees and our brewers specifically have to certify a couple things with us. Our club licensees have to uh fill out the annual club certification form. And those were due uh at the beginning of February. And so hopefully everybody already has those in. What those do is give us the number of your uh members and also tell us who are the approved signers for documents and who your officers are. Because unlike corporations where we know who the stockholders are or uh LLCs where we know who the members are, we don't know from year to year who those officers are because clubs often change their uh leadership uh annually. And so that gives us uh some information there. Plus, we need to know how many members you have so that we can accurately calculate your renewal fees because those are based off of membership. For our microbrewers and brewers, primarily microbrewers, we only have a handful of brewers, you have to provide the number of barrels you manufactured each year because, again, fees are based off of that uh calculation of uh per barrel amount over a certain amount. Now, it's not too late. If you if if you haven't submitted that yet, uh please do get that submitted. You should have gotten an email uh with that information. And I know they've probably sent out a number of uh follow-up emails on that based on past experience. But we do need to get that in if you haven't done that, because otherwise you are not going to be able to renew. If you go to login on March 1st or thereafter when the portal is open, you won't be able to renew. And if you don't know why, that is probably the reason why. Uh especially if you're a club licensee or a uh brewer or microbrewer and you're not able to do the renewal. And so make sure that you've got that in. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to the uh liquor control commission to ask about that, and we can get you uh the details of what you need to provide us.

Sara Weber 4:43

On top of that, we have some outside housekeeping items that we like to remind everybody about that are not really liquor related, but they're equally as important. Um, so if you are in a fiduciary type relationship where you're handling the estate of a stockholder or member or a licensee in the liquor control commission, you need to make sure that your letters of authority are updated. Um, we would notify you ahead of time if there's anything we need ahead of renewal. Our staff also does a really good job of advising you if it could potentially hold up any renewal issues, but this is something that is essential and could hold up the renewal from being completed in the system. Additionally, you have your annual updates that you have to file with corporations and securities. So make sure that those are good and that your corporation or limited liability company, et cetera, are in good standing because if that is something that we are aware of, that could also place some type of hold on your renewal. We want to make sure that you are able to renew on time and make sure that you're able to get deliveries and continue business operations. There's a couple other internal um issues that we could be concerned with as well. And I'll let David speak to some of those since they typically tend towards a violation issue or a potential violation if we're aware of them. So, David, you want to talk about that quick?

Escrow Rules, Deadlines, And Sales

David Marvin 6:09

Yeah, so if you have a dishonored payment to the commission where you've purchased spirits or made some other payment that that was dishonored, uh most of the time it's just for purchasing spirits from us. We do see manufacturers and wholesalers that have paid taxes where they might have had a dishonored payment there. If that is still outstanding with us, that will hold up the ability to renew. Most violations at this point do not hold up a renewal. There are some situations where if it is an escrowed license, we might put a hold on there. So until that payment is made for that violation, you would not be able to renew. But most of the time, if you have a violation, you're you're gonna be okay, unless you have a suspension. If it's a suspension, then there is a hold there, and we do need to get that taken care of. Those might be a couple things where you get in and you to go and renew on our portal and and you can't, and that's why it's gonna be there. Which also is a question, um, Sarah, that that came up while we were uh discussing this. I was I was thinking about this. What happens uh with an escrow license? If I have something in escrow, I'm obviously not actively operating. And then do I have a certain amount of time, certain number of years that I can have a license in escrow before I have to do something else with the commission? And and what is that?

Sara Weber 7:27

A license that is not being utilized is um placed in what we call escrow. And that license, as long as you are renewing it on an annual basis, can be renewed for up to five years after it's been placed into escrow. After that, we'll call it the sixth year that it comes up for renewal, you will get a notice in the mail ahead of time. We usually send those in about November, December area to give you plenty of notice that you are not going to be able to renew that escrow license this year because you have to show good cause to the commission on why they should allow you to continue to hold this license past that five-year escrow period. Those are considered by the commission on an agenda. And if they approve it, it's usually approved for a one-year basis. We would release the renewal application to you online at that point and allow you to go in and renew the license through the portal. As long as you have renewed it and paid your fees, then you that license will again be able to remain in Askrow. And you bring up a good point to this because I know we have a lot of licenses that have been placed into Askrow because the uh licensee is in the process of selling their business and the applicant or the person buying the license has requested a conditional license. So a notice to those sellers out there if a conditional license is issued, the permanent license is still in your name, regardless of whether or not the permanent license application has been considered until a license is issued to a new buyer by the commission, you are still responsible for renewal. You have to renew that license in order to maintain that and preserve that license for purposes of transfer. So if you're not sure, you need to go in and check the system or you can contact our office and we can verify that for you. But worst case scenario, make sure that you renew so you can avoid having the license canceled and it and have that um sale of or potential sale of your business andor license fall through for failure to renew.

David Marvin 9:31

Yeah, I know we've had that happen on a number of occasions where the conditional licensee thinks they're they're okay and they don't realize that the the seller that still owns the license technically hasn't renewed and and and we have to break that news to them that they're they no longer have uh essentially a license there. Now we we do try to work with people and and the the thing is we we we want businesses to succeed. So we'll work with people, but we do have to follow the law, and and the law does say if that license is not renewed, then the conditional license is also affected. And so that is a really good uh a really good reminder, Sarah, because uh I I know that every year it seems like we have a handful where that happens because people just assume, hey, I'm I've I've that conditional license has been issued, I as the seller am no longer operating. Uh and so it it kind of you you forget that it's still your responsibility until the transfer takes place, which means a lot of times right before uh April 30th, we have a lot of people rushing to get their conditional, their their permanent licenses issued so that they can get that transferred. Uh, and I know there's always a rush with that.

Triennial Renewals For Sales Roles

Sara Weber 10:36

I think it's also important to note, too, that a license approval order issued by the commission is not the same as the license being issued to the buyer. So you have to make sure that you are communicating well with the person who's buying your license and or checking our system to make sure that the license has been actually issued to that new person before you divest yourself of any further responsibility involving the license. We touched on the escrow renewal a little bit. Um, and David mentioned some things I wanted to point it out too. When you go into the renewal portal to renew an escrow license, you will not get a new license to print because your license, you're not operating. So there is no license for us to actually issue to you. Um if at any point you want to remove the license from escrow and activate that license, then at that time we would issue a license to you and or you would be able to go in and print that license off the system.

Accreditation Requirements And Who Renews

David Marvin 11:35

So, Sarah, at the very beginning of the episode, we talked about this being a triennial renewal year where we have uh licenses that renew only every three years up this year. And that means we've got several thousand more licensees that we have to renew. Those licensees are uh salesperson licenses and uh vendor representative licenses and broker licenses. They're issued at least the first two, the vendor representative and the salesperson licensees are individuals, and that's why we have more of them. And then the brokers are for companies. Um, salesperson licensees, uh, just a quick uh uh review of what those are. Those are individuals that work for a wholesaler or for a supplier, uh like a manufacturer of alcohol, to go out and promote their products. They can go out, they can talk to retailers about uh buying their products, they can uh do certain samplings based on permits that the licensee holds, they can do promotions at on-premises licensed locations, uh, they can promote their product directly to customers at at uh retail establishments. And and so they are the individuals, the boots on the ground for these companies that are out there. Um it for wholesalers, they also are people that are doing um not necessarily stocking the shelves. Uh there are some exceptions there for licensees that are only uh putting up products on the shelf or driving a truck. But if they're gonna have that interaction with the retailer or customers, then they need to have that salesperson license. So it's it's generally something you you you wanna um if you're gonna be talking and trying to sell the product as opposed to just moving it from point A to point B, you probably want to have the salesperson license. Uh vendor representative licenses are similar to salesperson licenses, but they primarily function as a way for a vendor of spirits to sell its product to the commission so that it can go out to be sold to retailers. But vendor representative licensees can also do promotions, they can also uh go to retailers and promote the product so that if I'm a bar or a restaurant or a grocery store or a liquor store, they could come to me and say, Hey, I've got this fancy new vodka or fancy new tequila or fancy new rum. Here's how you go about ordering it uh from the commission. And then broker licensees are essentially corporate salesperson licensees. So they're a company that actually hires salesperson licensees, and but they're they are the ones that actually are, as opposed to the the supplier tier licensee or the wholesaler, um, they're the people that hire all of them. So those always go to a company, but they are a company that is doing the promotions. They're not actually making any alcohol, they're not actually selling any alcohol, all they're doing is promoting it, and they hire the salesperson licensee. So we will see companies that um you'll have a uh a manufacturer who is located in another state, and they're not gonna hire a bunch of people to drive from, let's say, California all the way to Michigan to promote their product. So they will hire an in-state company that has a broker license to represent them, and the salesperson licensees that work for the broker will go out and do uh that promotion. So those are all going to be renewed this year. And the one key thing is for the salesperson licensees, and this is something this is a uh that has to be done for all salesperson licensees within 120 days of the renewal, is that they have to take a salesperson accreditation class. Now, there are two programs that are out there. One is offered by the Michigan Beer and Wine Wholesalers Association, and the other one is offered by the Michigan Brewers Guild. I will put the links to both of those programs in the notes for this uh episode so that'll be easy to find. You can also go to the MLCC website, and there's a big button on the front that says salesperson licensees. If you click on that, it has those programs there and it has all the forms for applying for a new license. The salesperson licensees are all renewed on the portal by the uh company for whom they work. So if I am a salesperson licensee and I work for a brewery, when the brewery goes to renew its license, it's renewing the license for me. I, as an individual, don't go in and renew it. So if you're a salesperson and you're listening and you want to know how to renew it, go talk to the people that you work for. They are the ones that are going to have to do that renewal. You aren't. But you, as the individual, do need to go out and take that certification class within the next, well, within 120 days of the issuance of the license. So by now you may have already taken it or you will be taking it here in the next uh couple days or weeks uh before it's renewed. And then your your the licensee for whom you work for, your boss essentially, when they renew the license, they'll check a box saying that all the people they're renewing for have had their accreditation. And if they haven't, they probably should wait to renew until they all have had their accreditation. And uh because the law does require that to be done before the renewal is done.

MI Login: Getting Into The Portal

Sara Weber 16:46

Okay, getting back to the renewal portal, because this is a question that gets raised quite a bit. And I know we we always every year have a lot of new licensees. So for those of you old hats, this might be a good reminder. Otherwise, if you're not really familiar with it, I think this is a good way or good segue into the renewal portal because there are newer features that have we've been required to bring online over the last few years and specifically involving MILogin. And I know that the that process in and of itself can be a little confusing. So I'm gonna ask David to kind of walk through that a little bit and explain what you should be looking at a little bit and you know how where you should be accessing it in order in order to get to the MLCC portal.

New Features: Email Notices And Print License

David Marvin 17:33

Yeah, the MILogin is a statewide uh, and I say statewide for the state of Michigan system that they have that has been implemented for state websites across the board in most cases. Uh it's added security so that there aren't hackers that are trying to get into the state system that to help control uh issues and keep things from happening so that we all can continue to use the state websites. So if you were to renew your driver's license, you have to have an MILogin password. If you were to um renew your corporation's paperwork and all of that kind of stuff, they have MILogins. Now, the one thing that we have to make sure everybody understands right up front is there's a couple different types of MILogins. So as a state employee, there's a state employee MILogin, which we can't access the portal from there. There is, and this is where it gets confusing, there is MILogin, just plain across the board for anybody who needs to uh renew something as an individual. So if you're renewing your driver's license or your license plates online, that's what you would have is MILogin. That is what you need for the uh renewal portal for liquor control. There's also MILogin for business, and that is not what you need. If you have an account, you can use the same password and the same uh email address, but you'll need to set up an just a regular MILogin um account because the MILogin for business will not work with the portal. It's only set up to work with the regular MILogin. Now you say, how do I get to all of that? Well, if you go to the MLCC webpage, which is mi.gov slash lcc, all year round we have a button there for the renewal portal. You can click on that any time of the year, any time of day, really, and it will have the instructions on how to set up a MILogin page, and you can do all of that whenever. It doesn't even have to be renewal time. And we recommend people that when they get their license brand new, go and set that up right away. And it has all the instructions there on how to do it and what you need to take care of to do that. And once the portal goes live here in a in a few weeks, uh, you'll still go to that same page. We'll have a bigger button on the website just for renewal to help everybody uh see it a lot easier. It'll be closer to the top of the page, but you will still need to do that MILogin uh to even get into the portal. Once you have that password set up and you click on the link, it'll take you to the portal. And there's other things you need to do if you have a uh if you're a new licensee on linking your MILogin page to the portal. But all of that will be there's all instructions on our website on how to do that. If the page you go to when you click on the button for renewal, has a number of instruction guides, one for how to set up an MILogin, one for linking your MILogin page and your portal page to your license. And then ultimately there's instructions on how to print your own license, which we'll talk about here in a little bit.

Avoiding Duplicate Payment Errors

Sara Weber 20:35

Thanks, David. I know that's it's confusing for people. Um, if you're listening, you know, for me, I'm more of a visual learner. So getting into the system, looking around, kind of uh digging into the material, I think it'll be really helpful for everyone. Don't wait until the last minute because then you're feeling more frenzied about it. Um, if you run into any issues, you wanna you wanna make sure that you give yourself plenty of time to get this process done because I know it can be a little scary and new if you've never done it before, or if this is only your second time doing it, um, it can be a little overwhelming. David touched on a few things that are new for this year, so I'm gonna dig into that a little bit. Uh specifically, uh the renewal process itself in the past, when you submitted your renewal online, it would tell you that the renewal is complete and then it would allow you to go in and print your license. For those of you who in the past have experienced an issue where you completed the renewal and submitted it and it's in a hold status for whatever reason. David and I kind of touched on those a little bit earlier. There could be other issues too, but that hold status, what that means is that a person in our office needs to physically review your renewal submittal. Um, it could be for a number of reasons. If you've made changes to Your renewal, where you're requesting to cancel licenses or permits, or if they've got a review holds or anything like that, it requires someone to physically audit that record. Once they have completed that and they've completed your renewal, if it is able to be completed, I will say that you are going to now be notified via email that the renewal has been completed and that you can now log in and print your license at that time. So that is a new feature for this year. I think that'll be really helpful for anyone who has that issue crop up. You can know at that point that if it's on hold, you're gonna get an email either way. It's either gonna say that it's completed or you're gonna get a letter from our staff saying why we couldn't complete it. And they they do send those out pretty frequently. If you needed to submit extra money or anything like that, or if there's a hold, you should know. And then again, if it's completed, you can go in and print. Another new feature for this year, and this is one that we're really excited about, is that the renewal portal is going to have a new tab appear at the top that says print my license. And what this allows you to do is go in at any point during the year. If you need a copy of your license or you lost it, or you didn't, you don't think you got the email or whatever purpose, you can go in and print your license. And that will contain all the real-time data for your license at that point in time. So it's not just what you had when you renewed the license. So any changes you've made, you can go in and get a duplicate license printed for yourself. You don't have to notify our office or wait for us to be able to provide that to you. It should be more of an immediate thing. So I think that helps everybody, including us, um, so you can get your information a lot faster.

Help, Patience, And Support Options

David Marvin 23:45

Sarah, one other thing that I wanted to bring up, and this has been an issue uh over the years with our renewal portal, is that if you have multiple payments for multiple licenses and they happen to be identical. So let's say I have two Class C licenses at two different locations, and I have a Class C license and a Sunday sales permit at both, and that's all I have to pay for. That's $690. If I pay for one and then I go to pay for another, it's just a way that the state um system is set up for credit cards, and this applies to driver's licenses. I've had this happen with uh my license plates before where I had identical amounts of money that I owed for each license plate and I didn't set it up right, and so I paid for one and then I went to pay for the other, and I paid too quickly. And it thinks it's a duplicate payment. Now, this is a setting that was set up by the Department of Treasury to make sure that people weren't overpaying for things and keep on pressing the pay button and end up paying 10 times for something. So if you do have a scenario where you have license fees that are identical and you're renewing more than one license, do allow about five minutes in between payments so that the system realizes you're not just making a duplicate payment. What it is is it's literally another uh totally different transaction. Because otherwise, what happens with that is if you try to do that, it'll error out. And then we have to the next day clear that out of our system. We can't even do it the same day. We have to wait 24 hours to make sure that there isn't something there uh that is actually supposed to be going through the system. So if you do have that happen, do realize that you can come back the next day and make the payment. I know it's kind of an inconvenience. There's not a way that we can change that. This is the the way that the state credit card system works for all state agencies that use it. And so that that will be a thing that you have to remember is to allow a little bit of time in between.

Sara Weber 25:44

I know that's a total pain and very frustrating for everyone. We completely understand that. Um, if this happens, and again, if it's April 30th, you technically May 1st will not be able to sell. Understand that that's why we always say renew as soon as you can, because things do happen. And this is one of those things that could potentially happen. And you have to allow for that 24-hour period before we can go in and clear errors like that out so you can go back in and attempt to renew again. So just keep that in mind. If you have any questions or concerns about it, reach out to our office. We are here, and that is uh kind of where I want to end with today. We have a lot of resources on our website, both on our splash screen and in the renewal portal. There's contact information, email addresses, phone numbers. The only thing I ask is that you try to be patient during renewal. Like David alluded to at the beginning of the episode, we have tens of thousands of licenses that we are working on processing and renewing. We know that people are going to have issues. We know that people are gonna have questions or concerns or, you know, their inability to access a system. We do work and troubleshoot and do everything that we can. We have to coordinate with MILogin on some issues where you may have to go over there and talk to them. But I think that everyone does a really good job of trying to work with you. We just need to ask that you be patient during that process and allow us to time to communicate back to you on what needs to be done. I think some of these new features this year are going to help with some of the backlog because I know we do get a lot of duplicate license requests during this time as well. But by going into the system, taking a look around yourself, do some research, and then call us if you're not able to or email us and we'll respond back. But I, you know, we do have a lot of resources out there for you. Um, just ask that our renewal team be given a little bit of grace during this time.

David Marvin 27:48

Well, thank you, Sarah, for having this uh brief conversation on renewal. I know it's gonna be helpful to a lot of people out there so they know how to navigate our renewal system a little bit better. And as you say, our staff is always willing to answer those questions. We'd rather help people get it done right uh than have people struggle with it. And again, because we do have the volume, please do be patient with our staff. We are gonna try to help as quickly as possible, but there's only so many phones that can ring at a time, and and we do have to take all those calls. And email is also a good way of getting in touch with us that because then we can obviously send uh instructions and stuff back if we need to. But with that, I thank you for uh having this uh brief conversation, and we look forward to talking again soon on the MLCC on the road podcast. The MLCC on the road podcast is brought to you by the Michigan Liquor Control Commission. For more information on the Michigan Liquor Control Commission, please visit our website at www.missionigan.govslash lcc. Thank you for listening.