Fenway Park self-checkout leading to underage drinking, according to concessions workers

BOSTON — Fenway Park concessions workers are sounding the alarm on grab-and-go beer stations, claiming they lead to underage drinking and overconsumption. However, according to Aramark which implemented the self-checkout lanes back in 2018, they’ve “never been cited for an alcohol violation” related to those stations.

Longtime concessions workers Laura Moffat and Amanda Savage brought their concerns and experiences to the State House on Wednesday and told lawmakers they feel liable when someone takes advantage of self-checkout, “abusing the system.”

“My concern is not with the incidents I am able to stop, but it is the ones we’re not able to catch,” Savage told the committee.

The pair, who’ve been working at Fenway for 18 seasons, testified in favor of House Bill 325 and Senate Bill 225, which would ensure that alcohol sales at all venues are directly conducted and supervised by an employee. They also said interacting with the fans is the best part of the Fenway experience, and with these stations, they’re not able to do that as much.

“We feel really disheartened by the fact that they’re destroying the experience of Fenway Park among other things,” Moffatt said.

“It’s more than just a transaction process, we’re here because we enjoy being here, we’re here because we love the fans, because we like doing this job and we want to be able to continue doing it,” Savage added.

Aramark wrote in a statement in part “We take pride in our longstanding approach to alcohol compliance at Fenway...To our knowledge, we have never been cited for an alcohol violation related to the supervised self-checkout locations.”

Red Sox EVP of Government Affairs and Chief Compliance Officer Dave Friedman also made note of that in his testimony to the Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure, Wednesday morning.

“We’ve had a successful track record for over 7 years,” Friedman said.

Some Red Sox fans said they would prefer the human interaction when buying a beer, even if it means standing in line.

“I feel like the environment at Fenway is like a whole thing,” Emily Robida said. “You kind of want to have a certain nostalgic vibe when you go in there and you want to interact with people, and you want to interact with the workers.”

“I think we lose a lot of that human interaction these days and that is one of the ways we can grasp on to that is to interact with people at concessions stands and enjoy each other’s company at the baseball game,” Jack Dunning added.

H.325 and S.225 remain in committee and residents can submit testimonies online until Dec. 3.7 years

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