Liquor board dismisses violations against 6 Hampden businesses cited after festival

Baltimore’s liquor board dismissed charges Thursday against six businesses cited for selling alcohol during the Hampden Highlights Festival this past summer.

The businesses are some of the biggest names in Baltimore’s food scene: The Duchess, Golden West Cafe, The Wine Source, The Food Market, Hampden Yards and True Chesapeake Oyster Co. Owners said they only learned two months later that they’d been in violation. They went before the board at a hearing Thursday to protest the citation, each of which potentially came with a $500 fine.

Two inspectors with the liquor board testified that they stopped by the festival in early June and snapped photos of the vendors selling alcohol, though the businesses lacked the required permits.

The festival began in 2024 after the dissolution of Honfest, which ended after three decades. Event organizer and Golden West owner Samantha Claassen said she had believed that her and others’ businesses were permitted to sell alcohol during the festival, which was sanctioned by the Department of Transportation, because they all had off-premises catering licenses. But in reality, the vendors also needed special permits, or extensions, to sell alcohol during the event.

The permitting snafu confounded even Baltimore’s permitting tsar, William Bauer, who goes by the name Lou Catelli and frequently works with restaurants in Hampden. Catelli said afterward he had found no record of another business in violation for using a catering license at such an event within the past 10 years.

But Matt Achhammer, community liaison for the liquor board, noted that in the past two years, four different establishments in Baltimore were found in violation for not having extensions. The liquor board has since begun disseminating flyers informing licensees of the rules, though none of the Hampden businesses said they had received them.

Moving forward, Achhammer said, the liquor board hopes to find a legislative fix to make it easier for local businesses to sell alcohol at festivals.

Representing The Food Market, chef John Bedingfield said the restaurant on Hampden’s Avenue sold alcohol at Hampden Highlights and Honfest before that since 2013, and never obtained additional permits to do so.

Attorney Stephan W. Fogleman represented all the businesses, terming them “The Hampden 6.” He called them “excellent” establishments with clean track records. The violations, he said, were the result of a miscommunication and vague rules, which have since been clarified. “This’ll never happen again,” he said. “Boy have they learned the hard way.”

Fogleman also took issue with the means of enforcement, which took place months after the fact. “It’s weird to me that inspectors don’t announce their presence,” Fogleman said, calling it “a covert operation.” The result, he said, felt like a “gotcha” and “anti-business.”

The liquor board’s chief inspector David McGinnis told commissioners during the hearing that inspectors opted not to speak with any of the businesses during the event itself because “we did not want to initiate something that would lead to a confrontation” and force the festival to end.

Ultimately, liquor board Chair Granville Templeton found Fogleman persuasive, calling the situation “an educational mistake.”

“You guys did a good job by hiring Mr. Fogleman,” Templeton said.