What possible public interest would there be in forbidding a brewery from selling food? If anything, I can imagine the opposite, that breweries be required to serve food.
"We pay a million dollars for a liquor license and a craft brewery can pay as low as $1250 per year for their license, its not fair they can do the same things as us"... but their argument is flawed. Breweries can only serve what they make, make HUGE investments in stainless steel and infrastructure a restaurant doesn't have to make and makes most of their money wholesaling their product (large ones anyway).
Even the core point of the TIPS certification training, which is required of everyone serving beer at a brewery in NJ by the NJABC, agrees with you. Food needs to be served to reduce people getting loaded out of their mind.
This is why the NJABC capitulated in allowing bars and breweries be allowed to have peanuts, chips and other de minimis snacks on the bar for patrons. It was incredibly hypocritical. They bought into the whole "salty snacks are to sell more beer" BS.
The NJABC and alcohol laws need to be revised but for the Woodchuck to sit on the bill calling for a comprehensive alcohol bill instead is BS. Pass what is sitting on this desk there and move forward.