Minor changes coming in booze laws
A few minor changes may be coming in our booze laws – I actually never knew that you haven’t been able to bring home leftover wine from a resto as neither I nor any of my friends has ever found ourselves in that predicament.
Article also says it will be permitted to have a drink in a restaurant without ordering food, which sounds like it may end that silly business of establishments that are functionally bars but are operating under resto licenses having to make clients order food if they want a drink.
C_Erb 23:21 on 2012/04/24 Permalink
That’s a change that won’t be welcomed by the kitchen staff in bring your own wine joints. When I worked in one as a dishwasher and cook, we usually left work quite drunk from the unfinished bottles of wine that were sent back to us. Sometimes clients would get so drunk that they would forget that they brought wine and resulting in uncorked bottles coming back for us to enjoy.
Kate 09:54 on 2012/04/25 Permalink
There’s bound to always be some leftover wine not worth toting home and you can always count on some people still being too tiddled to notice.
Robert J 11:24 on 2012/04/25 Permalink
Whether you run a bar or a restaurant, you want to be able to stock the maximum variety of products while paying the minimum permits. Clients make a mental note of places that have limited permits and don’t go back.
Some people will have you believe that liquor permits protect the community for alcoholism and public intoxication. The most socially “problematic” bars are large format ones because they are environments that are hard to monitor and they create nuisance on a large scale. Those establishments will always pay for the most expensive permits, while smaller ones will try to get by with a partial one. Small places are better for the community, because they provide a friendly, casual environment for drinking and the potential nuisance is on a smaller scale and easier for staff to manage.
Multiplying permit types encourages the nice, small places, to be driven out of town by big commercial chains and makes the bar scene boring and ugly. A single permit that includes all products and doesn’t distinguish between restos and bars would even the playing field and be better for the community.
But the government likes the system as it is, because it allows them to squeeze more money out of small places that can’t afford the better permits, while preventing them from having a competitive variety of products.
Here are the different permit types as is.