Join us to help build a vibrant and sustainable restaurant scene in Boston neighborhoods through equitable access to Boston's liquor licensing process! Liquor licenses are crucial to the success of small businesses, and can cost more than $600,000 on the transfer market.
In 2024, the City of Boston approved 225 new liquor licenses, 198 of which are non-transferrable and restricted to businesses within 13 zip codes and the Oak Square neighborhood of Brighton with low numbers of restaurants and bars which serve alcohol.
In partnership with the restaurant advocacy group Offsite Hospitality, Code for Boston is working to create a mapping and visualization tool that tracks the distribution of these liquor licenses, increasing transparency and enabling equitable access to these licenses by aspiring restaurateurs.
We are looking for product managers, GIS and data visualization experts, visual and content designers, UX researchers, data wranglers, and web developers to help us make this project a success
- @Curt Project Lead
- @Nick Korn Project Sponsor
- @Will CfB Core Team
- Bring transparency to the city's liquor license inventory and availability
- Deliver working V0 prototype to project sponsor for May 23rd licensing round, refine for V1 launch this summer
- Align data schema with City of Boston standards where possible (See https://data.boston.gov/)
- TBD
Meetings every Tuesday at Code for Boston
- March 4, 2025: Project Kickoff
- March 11, 2025: Overall workplan discussion and sub-team breakouts around data, tech stack, and product design