First Look: New Savannah Restaurant Rules

WSAV has your first look at new rules designed to close what some have called a loophole in laws designed to keep those under 21 out of bars and nightclubs.
 
 
“The law is you have to be a restaurant or you have to be a club,” an angry Van Johnson told WSAV back in December. Johnson spent weeks trying to get city staff to crack down on Loco’s Grill and Pub after the council member witnessed what he believed was illegal activity. “At some point in the evening it turns into a club,” he explained. “You have a band. They are collecting admission and of course, there are individuals that are in there that are under the age of 21.”
 
Johnson and his fellow leaders passed a law early in 2006 designed to keep those under the legal drinking age of 21 out of bars, nightclubs and lounges. The law differentiates between restaurants that serve alcohol and other alcohol serving establishments.
 
The ordinance defines a full-service restaurant as “…a business primarily engaged in providing food services to customers who order and are served while seated……will have in operation at all times while open a fully-equipped commercial kitchen to prepare and serve food items…”
 
The law goes further to restrict where young people and alcohol can mingle inside restaurants, “Bar areas, consisting of bars with barstools and prominent displays of package alcohol and alcoholic beverage preparation and dispensing equipment, must be in an area separate and distinct from dining areas and persons under the age of 21 shall not be permitted in such bar areas.”
 
According to Johnson, Loco’s violated at least two of those defining behaviors by closing it’s kitchen while keeping the bar open for late night concerts and by not keeping those under 21 out of the bar area. Many on council suggested the hybrid bar/restaurant activity was an invitation to problems with underage drinking. Indeed, in October and again in December, underage undercover operatives were able to buy booze at Loco’s.
 
The City threatened to yank their alcohol license but in the end put the restaurant on probation and set about crafting new rules to deal with the hybrid nature of the operation. While the specific language of the new ordinance has not been released, WSAV has obtained details of what the new law will involve.
 
New category: Restaurants with Entertainment
 
New Fees: Restaurants with Entertainment will pay an additional 25% of the base alcohol licensing fees.
 
New Rules: Those under 21 may only be inside while the kitchen is open and actually serving food.
                   Those under 21 must leave no less than 30 minutes before large-scale live entertainment begins.
 
 
Michael Brown says small-scale entertainment during meal service is exempt from the new regulations he says activities such as those Alderman Johnson witnessed at Loco’s would fall under the new law. “If you are going to have lots of patrons at a certain hour every night with lots more people,” Brown explains, “and pull all the tables and chairs away and start having a hoedown, well then there is going to be a new set of rules.”
 
City Council should get to vote on the new regulations before Summer.