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SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah's liquor law reforms, approved by the State Legislature on its final day, are on their way to the governor to be signed into law.
Restaurants, bars and private clubs all applaud the changes, and a Utah company that doesn't even sell alcohol stands to benefit from the new law.
Utah's decades-old private club law is now history; no more membership fees required. The new law makes the state's DUI laws more strict and requires anyone who looks younger than 35 to have their driver license scanned to make sure they're 21 or older and that the ID is real.
Bar owners and restaurant operators are already making calls to Code Corporation of Bluffdale. It's one of only a handful of companies in the country making these devices.
Right now, the company's products are used in law enforcement. Motor vehicle divisions use them too, as well as many hospitals.
"We sell to hundreds of hospitals in the united states," said George Powell, president and CEO of Code Corporation. "We have a bar code reader at every bedside verifying that your mom in the hospital is getting the right medication.
In a restaurant-type setting, the scanner would read the bar code on the back of a driver license; the person's name and age are displayed. If the person is too young, the scanner will sound an alarm.
While the details of how many scanners will be needed in Utah are still being worked out, the new liquor reform law could provide a nice, and certainly unexpected, increase in business for Code Corporation.
"If it only addresses bars, we'll be many hundreds or a few thousand units. But if it goes into every restaurant that has a bar, it could be up to 10,000 units," Powell said. At $200-$500 per device, that's a nice boost to the bottom line.
Code Corporation ships 35,000 to 40,000 scanning units around the world every year, but none are currently being used for age verification in a bar or restaurant setting.
E-mail: kmccord@ksl.com
