Oklahoma bar and brewery marketing built on the specials the ABLE rules allow

Oklahoma caps a guest at two drinks at a time. Three exceptions are worth showing off in photos and menus, because each one gives people a reason to come in.

The tasting flight rule counts a flight as one drink. A beer flight holds up to four beers of up to five ounces each. Wine pours in a flight stop at one and a half ounces, and spirits at half an ounce. A cocktail flight also stops at four, built on those same amounts. The rule adds that a flight may not be free samples.

So a flight photo should show four glasses or fewer. A five-glass paddle on Instagram advertises a pour your staff cannot serve.

Buckets are the second exception. A guest may get up to six bottles or cans of beer at once, in their original packaging, in a bucket or a cooler. A game-day bucket post fits as long as it stops at six.

Self-pour tap walls are the third. Each guest gets a card or app credit for up to 32 ounces of beer or 10 ounces of wine. Staff check a photo ID before the first pour each day and again for every refill. The bar also keeps 60 days of video of the taps, under the self-pour section of the same law. So a post promising all-you-can-pour from the wall describes something the law does not allow.

Taprooms have their own limit on free tastes. A small brewery may give each visitor up to 12 ounces of free samples a day, inside a serving area on file with ABLE. Nobody under 21 may enter that area, as the small brewer license section sets out.

Home game days are the one time Oklahoma lets a guest leave a bar with an open beer. If your bar sits near a state college stadium, that walk is your best game-day post.

Normally no guest may leave with an open drink. The game-day exception lifts that for beer and wine, from 8 a.m. to midnight, on the day of a scheduled home football game. It covers bars within 2,000 feet of a school in the Oklahoma State System of Higher Education.

The State Regents' list of research universities names the two biggest of those schools: the University of Oklahoma in Norman and Oklahoma State University in Stillwater.

Three things follow for the posts:

• Check the distance first. Measure from your door to campus before a post invites anyone to walk out with a beer. Past 2,000 feet, the usual rule applies.
• Open early. On-premises sales may start at 8 a.m., so an 11 a.m. kickoff can carry a breakfast post.
• Say beer or wine. The exception does not reach a cocktail in a to-go cup.

Two more exceptions help bars away from campus. A bar invited into a city-sanctioned art, music or sporting event is covered when the city sends ABLE its list five days ahead. Guests may also carry beer or wine onto the bar's own connected property, or into a public area next to it that the city has approved, once ABLE has written notice five days ahead. So a street-closure watch party needs its paperwork filed before the posts go out.

A small Oklahoma brewery can take its beer on the road. That makes the event calendar as important as the taproom page.

The small brewer license covers breweries making under 65,000 barrels a year. It lets them sell their own beer to drink on site or to go, at the brewery or on land next to it. It also lets them sell at events open to the public, with no need to control the grounds. The law names trade shows, festivals, farmers markets and car shows, among others.

A few more permissions shape the message. An owner of several small breweries may sell beer from up to three of them at each of those three. A small brewer may also serve wine on site. A brewpub may hold a mixed beverage license as well, so it can pour cocktails.

So a taproom's site needs a page listing every event date. A Google profile can post Events with dates and times, and a post can repeat weekly, as Google's posts help page explains. A standing Saturday market slot is one repeating post, not a new one each week. The taproom budget post covers where the rest of the money goes.