It is not at all uncommon for only one person in a business to have a license and to be responsible for all others working under their supervision. And that may involve criminal charges- if I hire a licensed master plumber to replace my gas lines and his unlicensed employees do the job in such a way that my house explodes and I die, the master plumber might well be charged with some type of homicide due to his negligence in failing to supervise them properly. And the best case scenario is that Kalil failed to supervise the people selling alcohol under his license. He failed to ensure that that the manager did not create a schedule that included a shift with only underage employees. He failed to ensure that the underage employee had the mandatory alcohol training before working a single shift. He either failed to consider having a local partner who would hold the license and could supervise more closely, or considered and dismissed the idea. Those are all things he failed to do. The manager failed ,too- but she didn’t have a license and it wasn’t legally her responsibility. And again Kalil had to apply for the license- it wasn’t just given to him. If he didn’t want this responsibility, he didn’t have to take it on. There were ways to avoid it- including just not selling beer. Plenty of pizzerias/restaurants don’t sell beer.
I can understand that people might disagree with the idea that anyone should go to jail because they allowed an underage employee to sell alcohol - but that’s a separate issue from who should be responsible. And if the people of Minnesota are truly disturbed by it, they are free to vote in new legislators who will change the law ( but they won’t - because for all the outrage you may be seeing among your friends or among sports fans, it’s about 2768th on the list of things people think about for choosing a candidate)
And yes, Applebee’s does have a local person hold the license- because Applebees (like most other chain restaurants) are franchises , not company owned. Which means they have a relatively local owner.