Can a Florist Sell Alcohol With Flowers?

Adding a bottle of prosecco to a birthday bouquet, or a half-bottle of champagne to an anniversary order, is one of the easiest upsells a flower shop has. The margin is good and customers love it. But the moment you sell alcohol, you are in a different bit of the law to the one that covers flowers, and there is a check your driver has to do on the doorstep.

Here is the plain-English version of what is involved, and how to handle the age check on delivery without it becoming one more thing to remember at peak.

A quick note first: this is general guidance, not legal advice. Licensing is handled locally, so check the specifics with your council's licensing team (or, in Scotland and Northern Ireland, the relevant licensing board, where the rules differ).

Do You Need a Licence to Sell Wine or Champagne?

Yes. In England and Wales, selling alcohol (including a sealed bottle that goes out with a bouquet) is a licensable activity under the Licensing Act 2003. Two things usually need to be in place:

• A premises licence for the shop, authorising the sale of alcohol. For deliveries you want it to cover off-sales (alcohol taken away to be drunk elsewhere), which is what a gift delivery is.
• A personal licence holder named as the Designated Premises Supervisor. That person holds a personal licence and is responsible for the alcohol sales made under the premises licence.

Applications go through your local council, with a fee that varies by the rateable value of your premises. It takes a few weeks, so it is worth sorting well ahead of a peak like Valentine's Day or Christmas rather than the week before. Scotland and Northern Ireland run separate licensing systems, so the names and steps differ there.

The Rules When You Deliver It

Once you are licensed, the part that catches florists out is the doorstep. A few things hold whatever you sell:

• It is illegal to sell alcohol to anyone under 18. Most shops follow Challenge 25: if the person looks under 25, ask for ID. Accept the usual proof of age, a passport, photo driving licence, or a PASS-marked card.
• The check happens on handover, not at the till. For a delivery, the person receiving the bouquet is the one who has to prove their age, so the driver carries the responsibility for that order.
• No ID, no handover. If the recipient cannot show ID, or is clearly under age, the alcohol should not be left. The driver brings it back or the order is carded, rather than handed over on trust.

None of this is hard. The risk is that it gets forgotten in the rush, a driver with 30 stops on a Saturday does not always clock that stop number 19 has a bottle of wine in the box. That is the bit software can take off your plate.

How Digital Florists Handles the ID Check

In Digital Florists, age verification is a setting on the product, not something anyone has to remember per order. You turn it on once for the things that need it, and the system carries it through to the doorstep.

Flag the product once

On any product, champagne, wine, or anything similar, you switch on Age verification in the product settings. From then on, every delivery order that includes that product is flagged automatically. There is no per-order box to tick and nothing for whoever takes the order to remember.

The driver gets told before they set off, and again at the door

When the run is built, the delivery portal hands it to the driver on the Companion App, and the age-restricted stops are clear from the start:

• The route details screen tells the driver how many stops in this run need an ID check, so they can prep before they leave.
• On the order itself, a red ID Check Required banner makes it obvious which delivery it is.
• To complete the delivery, the driver ticks the age verification confirmation to confirm they saw the recipient's ID and they are 18 or over.

If the recipient cannot show ID or is not over 18, the driver does not tick the box. They use the couldn't-deliver flow with a note explaining why, so you have a clear record of what happened and the bottle comes back to the shop.

At the counter the customer is stood in front of you, so the Challenge 25 check happens face to face as you ring the sale through POS. The age-restricted flag does its real work on the doorstep, where you are not there to see who answers the door, and that is where it is carried through to the driver.

Worth Adding to Your Range?

For most shops, yes. Once the licence is in place, a bottle alongside the flowers is a simple add-on that lifts the average order, especially on the gift-led occasions florists already do well: anniversaries, new babies, big birthdays, corporate thank-yous. The licensing is a one-off bit of admin. The day-to-day worry, the doorstep check, is the part that should run itself, and that is the part the software is built to handle.

If you want to see the age-verification flag and the driver's ID check in the app, book a demo and we will walk you through it.