Springfield, IL (CAPITOL CITY NOW) – Tamara Keefe is trying to make her boozy ice cream legal in Illinois.

“We’re looking to make an exclusion out of the three-tier system” such that her products are considered a food and not a beverage. Keefe, CEO of St Louis-based Clementine’s Creamery, tried to sweeten up lawmakers and other Illinoisans during Tuesday’s “Food Innovation Day” the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association put on at the Capitol.

That three-tier system to which Keefe refers is a post-Prohibition division into producers / importers, retailers / wholesalers, and bars / retailers. “The distributors don’t have freezer trucks,” Keefe explained. “They don’t have capacity to be able to distribute our product, nor do they want to make the investment required to distribute such a small-volume product, according to them.”

“Manufacturers employ 650,000 workers directly, but food-and-beverage is the single largest share of that,” said Mark Denzler, president and CEO of the IMA. “About 18 percent of all manufacturing jobs are food- and beverage-related, so we’re just showcasing the industry.”