vanmega:

Imagine this: Out for a meal in a Vancouver restaurant, you spend $30 to $40 on entrees. But when you order a $45 bottle of B.C. wine, your waiter says: “Sorry, this is Vancouver; you’ll have to buy something cheaper.”

That’s exactly what could happen after Jan. 1, when the city’s new liquor licensing bylaw comes into effect.

An obscure subsection of the bylaw casts a regulatory net — intended to nab restaurants that are all bar and no food — that snares just about every other restaurant with a wine list aspiring to offer more than bulk wines. Under the bylaw, approved by city council Oct. 8 and coming into effect Jan. 1, the food portion of all restaurant receipts must account for at least 50 per cent of all revenues over any eight-hour period.

The city is imposing an annual $3-a-seat tax on all city restaurants, raising money to hire food police who will make sure restaurants comply.

Soooooooo brutal.  And really short sighted.

The slightly silver lining part about this is that it appears the law may be re-written to something more realistic/not bad for the business and customer.

(via blownspeakers)

I think something similar to this was already in place for certain restaurant licenses. When I was a dirtbag up in Whistler, there were a lot of restaurants you couldn’t just drink at and had to have a certain amount of food on your bill in ratio to the alcohol ordered. The liquor sheriff (or whatever they’re called) would come around and check the bills open to make sure, and sometimes we would have to order a meal when we just wanted drinks so our friends wouldn’t get in trouble. Technically, I could’ve just gotten wasted at home and then gone out and ordered two drinks and an appetizer and caused just as much trouble. It really doesn’t solve the problem of over-serving, since really it’s not the price of alcohol but the volume that determines intoxication, and it isn’t what someone does or doesn’t eat, but their weight and tolerance that also come into play.