Alcohol Deliveries
Configure your integration to send alcohol deliveries on the Burq platform.
Context
Merchants who want to include alcohol products in their deliveries must ensure compliance with local, state, and federal legislations. Additionally, each delivery containing alcohol products must be declared explicitly, either through Burq Dashboard or API. This guide explains how to create alcohol deliveries via Burq Dashboard and API.
Compliance
Burq does not offer legal advice on where and when alcohol products are allowed for delivery. Before sending alcohol deliveries to Burq, merchants must first ensure they are licensed and their alcohol deliveries (both address and time) are permitted under all applicable government regulations. Failure in compliance may result in delivery cancelation without refund, loss of goods, and permanent account suspension.
We have listed some common regulations related to alcohol deliveries below for your reference. This is not a comprehensive list, and merchants are responsible for their own due diligence:
- Local Laws – Make sure you’re allowed to deliver alcohol in your area. For example, it is not allowed to ship alcohol in the city of Las Vegas. Certain jurisdictions also forbid alcohol deliveries on certain days of the week or certain time during the day.
- Prohibited Locations – Alcohol deliveries may be against the law at certain locations such as school, government facilities, package storage facilities etc.
API Usage
All deliveries containing alcohol products must be declared when calling the Create-Quote API and Create-Delivery API.
Request Payload
When calling the Create-Delivery API, set contains_alcohol
to true
.
If your integration provides a quote_id
when creating deliveries, you must also set contains_alcohol
to true
when generating quotes from the Create-Quote API; otherwise an error may be returned.
Provider Preference
Only adults over legal drinking age are allowed to accept alcohol products. This means alcohol deliveries cannot be contactless and must be returned to store when undeliverable (with additional return fee applicable in the event a delivery is returned):
// POST /v1/quote
{
"contains_alcohol": true,
"required_provider_settings": {
// both of these following settings are require when shipping alcohol products
"signature": true,
"undeliverable_action": "return_to_store"
},
}
// POST /v1/delivery_information
{
"contains_alcohol": true,
"required_provider_settings": {
// both of these following settings are require when shipping alcohol products
"signature": true,
"undeliverable_action": "return_to_store"
},
}
For more information about provider settings, please see our Provider Settings guide.
Response Payload
Quote API and Delivery API resource contains boolean property, contains_alcohol
. When this property is true
, the quote/delivery was declared as containing alcohol products.
Dashboard Usage
When creating deliveries with alcohol products, please make sure to check the box for “Contains Alcohol” (as shown below).

Alcohol deliveries are noted under "special content" in the delivery details view.

Delivery Experience
For all alcohol deliveries, delivery drivers are required by law to perform the following verifications upon arrival:
- Verify the recipient’s age and scan their ID upon delivery.
- Ensure the recipient is sober.
Drivers are required to return the items to store if they are unable to successfully perform both verifications. This will incur a return fee for the merchant.
Note: Alcohol orders cannot be left at the door or handed to someone else.
Provider Addendum
Not all delivery providers are able to handle alcohol deliveries in every jurisdiction. To maximize driver supply, Burq recommends merchants to review and submit the DoorDash Alcohol Addendum, which gives merchants access to Doordash alcohol delivery network. Interested merchants can reach out to their success manager or Burq customer support for more information.
Once the addendum has been signed, please let your Burq contact know. They’ll handle the rest with DoorDash to enable your account for alcohol deliveries, and update you when your account has been approved and enabled by DoorDash. The turnaround time for DoorDash is usually 3-5 business days. If turnaround time has passed, you can contact your Burq POC.
Additional Information
What happens if alcohol is sent through Burq without an alcohol flag (DD escalations/Warnings)?
If a merchant ships alcohol or age restricted items without the approved paperwork or using the correct flags, your account may be suspended by the DSP.
For Merchants that have other merchants sending orders to Burq, will one Doordash alcohol addendum cover the entire business, or will each sub-merchant need to fill out a separate addendum?
All locations under the same legal entity are covered by one addendum. If, however, you have locations registered under different legal entities, you will need to complete one addendum for each entity.
Updated 6 months ago