Running a bar at a community event: authorisations and organisation
Published on September 18, 2026
The bar is often an event's first source of income, and its first source of administrative trouble. The framework is simple, provided you start early. What follows is the French framework.
The authorisation, first
An association that wants to open a temporary bar serving alcoholic drinks must obtain an authorisation from the municipal authority: the mayor, or the prefect of police in Paris. That authorisation is limited to a small number of occasions per year per association: the general rule is five a year, raised to ten for approved sports associations by way of exception granted by the mayor.
If your annual calendar is known, you can file a single application covering all of your events. It goes in well in advance: allow several months before the first one.
Which drinks
These temporary authorisations cover soft drinks and those in group 3: wine, beer, cider, perry, mead, and more generally drinks below eighteen per cent. Spirits are excluded.
The exceptions granted are also limited in time: around forty-eight hours per event. A longer event is therefore prepared with the town hall, not the day before.
The special cases to check
- Sports grounds: selling alcohol there is forbidden in principle, with exceptions possible, tightly framed, and to be applied for.
- Protected areas: around schools, hospitals and certain other places there are exclusion perimeters. They are set locally.
- Public land: occupying a square or a street requires permission to occupy it, separate from the bar authorisation.
Three reasons to telephone the town hall as soon as the date is fixed: it gives you the form, the deadline and the local constraints, which override anything you may read elsewhere.
What you are responsible for while the bar is open
- No sale of alcohol to minors, and none to anyone visibly drunk. This is the point the team must be briefed on without ambiguity, and where a doubt is settled by refusing.
- Displaying the prices and the notices on protecting minors and on public drunkenness.
- Making soft drinks available, at prices that do not push people towards alcohol.
- Handling the money: a till run by named people, emptied regularly.
The team that runs it
It is the most strained position of any event: the need varies threefold over a single evening, and nobody lasts eight hours behind a counter. Three simple rules:
- declare the need hour by hour: two people early in the evening, six at the peak;
- slots of three to four hours, with reliefs, so that the volunteers get to enjoy the evening too;
- adults only on alcohol service, and a named bar manager for each slot.
On the question of rewards (the drinks given to volunteers), declaring and drawing them down beats keeping a notebook: that is what perks do, counted down by scanning the badge.
Finally, remember to tell your insurer: a bar changes the nature of the event's risk. See insuring volunteers.
Frequently asked questions
How many bars can an association open in a year?
The general rule in France is five authorisations a year per association, raised to ten for approved sports associations by way of exception granted by the mayor. The count applies per association, not per event: check with your town hall.
Can you sell spirits?
Not under these temporary authorisations, which cover soft drinks and group 3, that is, drinks below eighteen per cent.
Do you need a licence for a bar with no alcohol?
Selling soft drinks does not fall under the same regime as selling alcohol. That does not exempt you from permission to occupy the site, nor from food hygiene rules if you are serving food: your town hall will tell you what it expects.