Around 15 million people, give or take, have heard about TinyBrickOven’s trouble with its liquor license.

In mid-December, Dave Portnoy, the Barstool Sports founder who moonlights as a king-making pizza critic, stopped by Will Fagg’s Federal Hill shop during his whirlwind tour of the city’s pie scene. At the time, the restaurant was getting ready to close for good. It wasn’t making any money, Fagg said; they weren’t able to sell alcohol, and restaurants often rely on beverage sales to turn a profit.

“Our politicians gave this market down here [Cross Street Market] their liquor license,” Fagg said in the video shared on social media. “But they won’t give us ours.” After sampling the pizza, Portnoy pledged to give the shop $60,000, which the owner said was the amount he needed to get a license and stay open for a year.

Fagg, who’s been hoping Portnoy would come to Baltimore since he first opened TinyBrickOven in 2019 — even putting a sign on the wall that says “Barstool Review Studio” — was beside himself. “Our politicians just turn their back on us” when it comes to the struggles of small businesses, he said. It’s a message he’s touted before: On the restaurant website, a blog post from October 2023 encourages customers to reach out to local representatives.

Since the video posted two days before Christmas, Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson’s office has been flooded with messages — thousands of them, from across the country — urging lawmakers to grant TinyBrickOven a liquor license. Spokesman David Schuhlein said Ferguson has heard Fagg’s concerns and has spent two years trying to assist him through legislative measures. State Del. Luke Clippinger said his office has also tried to help.

But the issue of why TinyBrickOven doesn’t have a liquor license isn’t as simple as one lawmaker waving a magic wand — or enacting one piece of legislation. The reason has to do with existing liquor laws, which are famously finicky in Baltimore. “Hyperlocalized” rules may change from one block to the next, inviting confusion for would-be restaurateurs, said Stephan W. Fogleman, an attorney whose clients include businesses pursuing their licenses.

Starting in the 1990s, state lawmakers barred new or transferred liquor licenses in Federal Hill and many other neighborhoods where residents felt there were already too many bars and restaurants. If someone wanted to open another bar or restaurant selling alcohol in one of those areas, they had to wait for another business to close and buy its license from the owner.

“Obviously there was some concern that Fed Hill had an excessive number of liquor licenses at the time,” said Fogleman, who served as Baltimore’s liquor board chairman from 2007 to 2014, when the cap was already in place. The current spokesman for the liquor board declined to comment.

The rules of limited supply and demand meant liquor licenses in those neighborhoods crept up in value. The price of a standard license for a tavern open seven days a week in the 46th District, where TinyBrickOven sits, has skyrocketed to $125,000 and up, Fogleman said. By contrast, a similar license in Hampden might cost less than half that amount. (Fogleman thinks the comparatively low cost of liquor licenses may be part of why Hampden has become such a hot destination for restaurants.)

Years ago, when Fagg looked into buying a beer-and-wine-only license from the owner of the shuttered-Big Jim’s Deli inside Cross Street Market, he was aghast to see the asking price was $60,000. He felt the owner kept the price high because of the limited number of licenses. “That system has been created by the government,” the pizzeria owner said.

Today, it’s a knotty issue to untangle. Legislators can’t change the law without having a broader impact on the market, Schuhlein said. Many current license holders borrowed money to get them or include their value in their retirement plans. They’d be furious if the licenses suddenly dropped in value.

“It’s a lot of different pieces here,” Clippinger said, pointing to the original community groups and neighborhood associations that backed the ′90s-era bans on new licenses. Those organizations are still active today, and would likely oppose any changes to the law. Making matters even more complicated, businesses within the 46th District can’t get a liquor license at all if they are too close to a school or church, Fogleman said.

Fagg hasn’t yet put the $60,000 from Portnoy toward a liquor license — he can’t find any in the area available at the moment. Instead, he used some of the cash to buy three new deck ovens to keep up with demand since the review posted online. And he’s looking to move to a bigger space. Sales are 10 times what they used to be even with a current limited menu, he said, and customers are filling the tables in the tiny restaurant.

TinyBrickOven might not even need that liquor license to survive after all.