There was a line of customers waiting to pay, some suspicious shoppers eyeing merchandise and people crowding the busy Kanku's store when Albert Wiley made his mistake.
One eye on a potential shoplifter and the other on a driver's license, Mr. Wiley says he must have punched in the wrong date of birth when he sold beer to an underage buyer working with police.
On Thursday, the mistake cost the store and another Kanku's owned by the same man, Vijay Chaudhari, a three-day suspension on beer sales, punishment levied by the Chattanooga Beer and Wrecker Board. The suspensions begin April 8.
But Mr. Chaudhari, who appeared with Mr. Wiley in front of the board on Thursday, tried to show that he has taken steps to make sure the mistake doesn't happen again. He has installed an electronic helper -- the Counter Top ID Scanner -- in his Kanku's on Central Avenue. The $925 machine reads bar codes on IDs from the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.
Counter Top ID ScannerCost -- $925Function -- The scanner reads driver's licenses and other forms of identification with a 2D bar code.And displays name and date of birth of cardholder and also shows a corresponding box on the left side of the screen for alcohol purchase and another box on the left side for tobacco purchase. If the cardholder is of legal age the boxes are green, if not the boxes are red. The device will not read a fake or altered ID.
At the Thursday beer board meeting, Mr. Chaudhari -- who owns Kanku's on East Brainerd Road, East 23rd Street and Central Avenue -- demonstrated the device to the board as he faced his two beer license violations.
After sliding an ID through the machine, the device displays a green box on one side of its screen if the person is old enough to purchase alcohol and the same type of box for tobacco sale on the opposite side.
If the person isn't old enough for one or either sale, a red box is displayed. If the ID is fake, the device shows no information at all.
A clerk still must match the name on the ID with what appears on the device's screen.
Beer board members applauded the new devices, huddling around as Mr. Chaudhari demonstrated, but still voted unanimously to suspend the beer sales licenses.
On March 5, the Central Avenue and East 23rd Street stores were checked by police compliance officers using an underage buyer. According to police reports, the clerk at the 23rd Street store did not check ID, while Mr. Wiley did check but sold anyway.
Ashish Chaudhari, owner of the Wilcox Boulevard Kanku's store, which has been in the news lately due to two fatal shootings on its lot, is Vijay Chaudhari's second cousin.
Mr. Wiley said the machine already has worked as a deterrent at the Central Avenue store, which is located near the campus of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
"When they're in line and they see (the machine)" many customers who appear underage leave the line and walk out of the store, he said.
Kanta Chaudhari, Vijay Chaudhari's sister and manager of the Central Avenue store, said the device stores up to 9,999 transactions and the data can be downloaded for storage. If the device cannot read the card for any reason, Ms. Chaudhari said she will not sell to the customer.
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