State shuts one Boston College liquor spigot by closing Newton delivery service it says had become popular among freshmen with fake IDs

The state Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission yesterday ordered the immediate shutdown of the Gopuff delivery outlet at 82-84 Needham St. in Newton after hearing evidence that over five days in the fall of 2021, its drivers delivered beer, vodka, wine, tequila, hard seltzer and even Four Loko to Boston College freshmen at a variety of locations on and near the BC campus.

Gopuff in recent years has opened a number of micro-outlets in the Boston area where, technically, one can just walk in and make purchases, but which exist mainly to service customers ordering stuff, in particular alcohol, online.

ABCC inspectors who had gotten complaints about underage BC students ordering up large amounts of booze for delivery, followed Gopuff delivery vehicles from the location on five nights in November and December, 2021 and watched as drivers delivered their wares to the first-year students - after they'd placed orders using fake IDs that showed them to be at least 21, according to an ABCC summary of the case. Some of the students met their delivery people just off campus with rolling suitcases or duffel bags in which to transport the bottles back to their dorms, the summary states.

According to the ABCC chronicle, most of the students quickly confessed to being underage and freshmen at BC, including the one who ordered two 30-packs of Natural Ice. One allowed as how word had quickly spread among the freshman dorms that year that Gopuff was the way to get booze.

In one incident, at 45 Priscilla Rd. in Chestnut Hill, though, the purchaser of two 12-packs of Bud, one 12-pack of Truly hard seltzer and one 750-ml bottle of New Amsterdam Pink Whitney vodka, dropped the duffel bag into which he had just jammed the bottles and ran towards the BC residence halls when inspectors announced themselves. Unfortunately for the kid, the duffel bag contained not just alcohol but a name tag with his New York State address on it - along with a letter addressed to him there. Using the New York State voter-registration system and Facebook, the inspectors quickly found him - and that he was only 19.

In their decision, the ABCC's commissioners said they were particularly aghast by the fact that the manager of the Needham Street outlet knew what was happening, because after each incident, the inspectors would return to the store and tell him what had just happened, and yet the cavalcade of boozemobiles to Chestnut Hill just kept rolling along. The manager kept telling inspectors, according to the commission summary, that he only controlled the liquor until it left his location and that whatever happened after that was out of his control, because the drivers worked for an independent contractor, not him.

The Commission is struck by the fact that Investigators notifed goPuff's Manager of Record after the first sale and/or delivery, and again after each sale and/or delivery that followed, but despite being informed of the initial sale and all that came after it, no action was seemingly taken to prevent additional sales and/or deliveries to patrons under the age of twenty-one.

If Gopuff wants to re-open the Newton location, it will have to file suit in Superior Court.