Early cutoff of alcohol sales during St. Patrick’s Day offers differing views

Similar to New Year’s Eve, alcohol sales during St. Patrick’s Day will stop at 8 pm and resume the following day according to Dr. Bonnie Henry.

The news is a little easier to take this time for the food industry as they have been given a week’s notice.

BC Restaurant and Food Services Association President, Ian Tostenson told MyPGNow.com the occasion will only impact a smaller section of the industry.

“For restaurants, honestly, St. Patrick’s Day isn’t the biggest day in the world. In fact, it is just another day – it’s really bars and pubs that people will get together and celebrate.”

“For pubs, if they have a little bit of food, they can certainly have an online presence. Have some fun and let people celebrate it albeit a little quieter in their own homes, order from that same pub perhaps, and have a virtual celebration. We just have to be creative right now.”

At the end of the day, the decision came down to the current COVID-19 case numbers.

“In fairness to Dr. Henry, what she tries to do is when she makes these calls, she looks at the most immediate data, and if in fact, let’s say the transmission rates went way down we probably wouldn’t have gone this route,” added Tostenson.

With that being said, Tostenson is optimistic restrictions on who you can dine with may open up as early as next month.

“If we can get these numbers to sort of below the mid-500 mark, we should see some progress on this by the beginning of April I think. We are going to be doing this in inches, not feel but I am confident that will start to happen.”

“The current recommendation is to go with your household so we could probably initially go back to a “safe six” and then we would probably look at extending the hours of operation past ten o’clock to maybe eleven or midnight. There are quite a bit of business restaurants pull in during the evening and some of the professionals like the doctors and lawyers who finish up late like to go out for meals.”

“In terms of capacity, we’ll see that as well too but a lot of the capacity issues have been dealt with by plexiglass and so restaurants have been able to engineer and use plexiglass and get up to 70 or 80% capacity,” added Tostenson.

With the pandemic now entering a full year, restaurants like most industries have had to adjust on the fly to keep their doors open.

However, Tostenson pointed out the industry has passed with flying colour since indoor dining was reintroduced by the Ministry of Health last May after a two-month closure.

“Collectively, this industry has done a great job with the public to provide a safe experience. As we look back on this, the restaurant industry can look back on this as a story to be told, and as far as I can see we are the only market in North America that has never shut itself down once after reopening about ten months ago.”

“It’s a bit of a mixed bag”

While the news of an early end to liquor sales is disappointing, Downtown PG President Eoin Foley noted the situation could always be worse.

“We are grateful that those restrictions aren’t more severe and that we weren’t in the position we were at this time last year where we were facing the fact of closing for an indeterminate amount of time.”

“It’s a bit of a mixed bag.”

Foley owns and operates a pair of restaurants in the city’s downtown core in Betulla Burning and Nancy O’s.

He admitted the restrictions put establishments like his and many others in a bit of a bind.

“With Betulla Burning, like many restaurants, it’s more of an annoyance where we have to close a little earlier and it’s not the type of business where a lot of people are going to drink a lot of Guinness.”

“For a place like Nancy O’s and even some of our competition like the Black Clover and the Westwood Pub it definitely has a bigger impact on the bottom line. That’s one of the biggest days of the year for us.”

Foley believes the provincial government learned a hard lesson over the holidays, sweeping out the rug from under many establishments province-wide by announcing the exact same restrictions for New Year’s Eve – giving the entire industry less than 24 hours notice.

“What happened on New Year’s Eve was a bit unfair to the whole restaurant industry. I think that the province got a lot of angry letters and phone calls and I think they have listened to us this time.”