Home Delivery Companies Aren’t Checking IDs When Dropping Off Booze

Deliveries were “noncompliant” over a third of the time.

SPECIAL DELIVERY: An icy night's traffic in Sellwood. (Blake Benard)
By Lucas Manfield

Over the past year, the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission have been running a sting operation with a volunteer team of 20-somethings. They’ve been ordering booze for home delivery on their phones and tallying whether the delivery drivers check their identification.

The results are now in: More than a third of deliveries were “noncompliant,” and the rate was even higher for younger buyers. Nearly half of deliveries to volunteers aged 21 to 23 didn’t pass muster. Most of the time, the delivery driver failed to compare the picture on the photo ID with the face of the buyer.

In 2% of cases, the driver simply left the purchase at the door.

The report, titled “Eyes on Oregon,” notes that the OLCC has “no uniform established procedures or authority” to monitor home deliveries, and recommends new “mechanisms for oversight.” Regulations allowing home delivery of alcohol were written in 1988 and the state has been tweaking the rules since.

“This is just one example of Oregon’s lack of evidence-based regulation to keep consumers safe from the costly harms of alcohol. Like cocktails to go, the law allowing home delivery of alcohol was ill conceived, defiant of public health best practices, and simply intended to sell more alcohol,” says Mike Marshall, executive director of Oregon Recovers.

The report mentions two delivery services by name, DoorDash and Instacart, but does not disclose the companies’ compliance rates. An Instacart spokeswoman responded to a request for comment from WW with a list of “alcohol delivery compliance protocols” that included matching faces with IDs. A spokesman for DoorDash said the company had “recently rolled out industry-leading safety features” and was willing to work with lawmakers.

Bryant Haley, an OLCC spokesman, says noncompliance is a nationwide problem that was exacerbated by the pandemic as alcohol delivery became more common. But policymakers have been slow to catch up. Lawmakers declined to pass legislation last year that would have authorized regulators to run enforcement stings on delivery providers, just like they do at restaurants.

“We need to work together on this,” Haley says.

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