Alcohol service training expands

Marquette’s Lower Harbor is a frequent home of festivals and public outdoor events. Alcohol is served at many of those events.

The servers are often volunteers, and the volunteers don’t always have the experience necessary to serve alcohol safely.

But the manager of a Marquette Township business is offering free alcohol service training.

“They (festivals and other events) don’t have a bar staff or a licensed staff that does that, and so it’s hard enough for people that serve drinks every day to be able to know when to cut somebody off, how to cut somebody off, how to check an I.D. well, let alone somebody who might do it once a year,” Superior Entertainment Center general manager Amy Manning said.

One of Michigan’s U.S. Senators recently got wind of the training that Amy offers, and his staff sent her a letter to congratulate her for offering it.

“I did get a letter from Senator (Carl) Levin’s office, just thanking me for offering the trainings,” she said. “This relationship with the Marquette County Health Department has been wonderful. We’ve trained over a hundred people in just the last two years.”

The Health Department and the Marquette County Substance Abuse and Violence Prevention Coalition help to offer the training.