Alcohol at funerals? McHenry City Council to decide

In the past three months, Robert Justen estimates his business has missed out on $75,000 in potential revenue because he can’t give families what they want.

Justen, the owner of Justen Funeral Home in McHenry, said that isn’t a traditional funeral, but a celebration of life with food and drink, often after the family member has been cremated.

“We just do the cremation” and the family goes somewhere else with food and alcohol, leaving his building empty, Justen said.

He first approached the McHenry City Council in November through a representative, asking if a beer-and-wine liquor license was possible for his business. Justen returned in person this week with a compromise suggested by Deputy City Clerk Monte Johnson.

Rather than creating a new liquor license class for a funeral home, Johnson suggested Justen work with caterers who also have a liquor license.

“A catering endorsement permits the service of alcoholic liquors for consumption, either on-site or off-site, whether the location is licensed or unlicensed, as an incidental part of food service. Prepared meals and alcoholic liquors are sold at a package price agreed upon under contract,” Johnson wrote in his report to the council.

“As people choose cremation, they don’t want somber. They want upbeat.”

—  Justen Funeral Home owner Robert Justen

Six McHenry businesses have a catering endorsement for their liquor license: 3 Queens, 31 North, DC Cobbs, American Legion Post 491, Ye Olde Corner Tap and Village Squire.

Justen said he recently worked with DC Cobbs management to cater a celebration of life for a family who lost a young child. Justen said the father told him “it brought me some solace [to have] a beer in my hand” while talking about his young child.

The City Council would need to change city code to allow caterers to provide alcohol along with food, Police Chief John Birk said. Current city code does not allow the sale of alcohol within 100 feet “of any undertaking establishment or mortuary.”

Birk said he didn’t care for the idea of a funeral home liquor license from a public safety standpoint, concerned it could open the door to other requests.

“If you start to allow other types of businesses alcohol licenses that are not bars and that are not restaurants, it becomes more confusing” when another business doesn’t get a license to sell, “like an auto repair shop,” Birk said.

The reality is, Justen said, that the percentage of families who choose cremation and not a traditional funeral has risen and likely will continue to rise.

“As people choose cremation, they don’t want somber. They want upbeat,” Justen said. If they cannot have that celebration of life at his building, they will do it elsewhere where alcohol also is served.

By allowing that celebration, “I can make use of the large facility I have. ... making sure I can offer the people what they want,” he said.

“I am not only trying to monetize the space in my facility but also serve people responsibly.”

The city code change allowing caters for the funeral home could be on the next council agenda, Mayor Wayne Jett said.