Lake County Gazette

At the Jan. 23 meeting of Mundelein village board, a liquor commission hearing was held over three different violations. The trustees were upset over the violations because two of the outlets responsible were repeat offenders. 

The Mundelein police department did compliance checks in December with minors who used their real, vertical IDs that showed them as under 21. All three of the businesses failed those checks. 

The board voted in favor of increasing the fines for liquor violations and will send out that information to license holders. 

"So obviously when we saw this, it was incredibly frustrating," Board member Karl Lambert said. "You have a board that consists of three of us with young kids. Two of the board members have kids in high school, and this is incredibly frustrating and defeating to see. To have Jewel come up here twice in a span of nine months, six months is embarrassing. It's completely unacceptable and cannot happen. And it is, in my opinion, in my favor that if we are to see you again, that your liquor license gets pulled for a set amount of time. And I don't know if you understand the details of that, but it would be painful. And I'm not above that because this is disgusting"

Jewel Food Store, at 1501 South Lake St., was the first called up, having been at the council in June of 2022 for the same violation. An employee of Jewel sold liquor to the minor sent in by the police department, not even asking the customer to supply an ID at checkout. As a second-time offender, it will be charged a fine of $1,500. The manager told the board that the outlet would be improving its policies and training for liquor purchase policies. He promised that he would be implementing an 'ID everybody' policy no matter the customer's age or appearance. The employee will face a three-day suspension and $250 fine per union guidelines, with the next offense being termination. 

Graham Enterprise Ivanhoe BP was the second offender and is also a repeat offender. It had also violated a compliance check in June of 2022. The city recommended a $1,500 fine but no suspension of a license yet. The manager apologized to the council and vowed to shore up security. It no longer accepts vertical or paper IDs, and requires an ID to be scanned into the system for a sale to go through. 

JR Chicago Oska Mundelein was also brought in to the board meeting. This was its first offense since 2014, so the board voted for a $500 fine on the business. The owner explained that one of his waitresses confused a birthdate after she checked the ID, so he said they would be working on double checking all ID checks.