Stop-Service to Obviously-Impaired Patrons

The Responsible Retailing Forum (RRF) has developed a community-based program - S-STOP (Stop Service To Obviously-Impaired Patrons) - that assists communities and their on-premises alcohol establishments to address the problems of over-service of alcoholic beverages. S-STOP is a six-month program, administered by RRF, which:

• Conducts Pseudo-Intoxicated Mystery Shop (P-I/MS) visits at on-premises establishments employing actors who seek to be served an alcoholic beverage while showing obvious signs of intoxication;
• Provides on-premises owner-operators and managers with confidential feedback on staff conduct and an Internet link to a video that shows how the P-I/MS that visited their establishments typically would have behaved;
• Provides resources to licensees to assist them in complying with over-service laws;
• Provides on-premises staff with a brief online training module on how to recognize and skillfully refuse service to potentially intoxicated patrons;
• Provides community stakeholders with aggregated data on the prevalence of alcohol over-service in their communities.

In this project, we will conduct and evaluate S-STOP in selected college and university communities in California.

Specific Aim 1 of this project is to demonstrate the effectiveness of S-STOP in reducing over-service. To achieve this, RRF will conduct a randomized control trial using a cross-over design. We will:

• Identify ten pairs of demographically matched college/university communities for a total of 20 communities and, in each community, recruit a minimum of 12 on-premises serving establishments for participation in the project;
• Conduct 3 P-I/MS baseline inspections in all 20 communities to observe pre-intervention over-service conduct;
• Randomly assign one community from each pair to receive S-STOP immediately (Cohort 1) and the other (Cohort 2) to serve as a control group and then to receive S-STOP later;
• Implement S-STOP in Cohort 1 communities for 3 months and conduct P-I MS in Cohort 2 control communities with no feedback to the licensees or community. At the end of the 3 months, we will end S-STOP in Cohort 1 communities, but continue unreported P-I/MS and begin S-STOP in Cohort 2 communities for 3 months;