Meanwhile, some food service providers, including major, longstanding Boston institutions, have overlooked, for years if not decades, their need to ever obtain the permit that renews annually.
Some organizations that provide food service as a secondary function to their core business, like hospitals, say that in the past they did not think their food courts and cafeterias needed the license.
“For years, a lot of these places didn’t have them,” the chief handler of “CV” license application and issuance, licensing board administrative clerk Nancy Mickiewicz, said by phone recently. “There are so many places in Boston that sometimes some go unnoticed.”
Now, tthe Boston licensing department has launched a new effort aimed at making the common victualler license less rare.
Mickiewicz said that this year the city has been sending letters announcing a new requirement: in order to obtain a health permit — a more-closely monitored annual certification and administered by another city department — organizations that require a CV license would need to either show an existing copy of one or arrange a hearing to request a new one.
She said that officials are also clarifying that while the license is not required in areas where access is restricted — for example, at employee-only or student-only cafeterias — the license is required in order to sell food in places that can be accessible to the general public.
Since the notices began being delivered to Boston establishments, Mickiewicz said the department has been flooded with application and requests for hearings before the licensing board.
She expects that between the beginning of last month and the end of this month, the licensing department will issue about 100 new common victualler licenses — far more than the five to 10 the city would normally issue in October and November.
And, the majority of those approximately 100 new licenses will go to businesses and organizations that have been running for more than the one year CV licenses are valid for before. But, Mickiewicz said, there is no penalty for having been in operation without the license.
