Hermosa Beach revisits restaurant food, drink ratio, taking aim at bars
Hermosa Beach’s Pier Avenue. File photo
The Hermosa Beach City Council spent more than three hours Tuesday night discussing how to differentiate between a restaurant and a bar. Ultimately, the council voted 3 to 2 to retain language defining a restaurant as an establishment with a 50-50 ratio of food to alcohol sales in a new ordinance proposed by the planning commission. The ratio is a measure by which to gauge whether a business is complying with the conditions of its conditional use permit. It has become a hot-button item revisited many times in public meetings, but will only be used as an enforcement tool.
“We don’t preclude music and we don’t preclude dancing and we don’t preclude drinking,” City Attorney Michael Jenkins said Tuesday night. “Music plus dancing plus drinking equals nightclub. But if they are serving food the entire time they’re open, then within the definition here they are a restaurant… This chameleon issue is a very difficult issue to resolve because we have businesses that have conditional use permits that allow them to stay open until 2 o’clock in the morning, yet we know that the majority of activity between 11 and 2 is not sitting down to a traditional meal in what we might regard as a bona fide restaurant. But they are in our definition of type 41 and type 47 restaurants.”
Tuesday’s public hearing revisited the puzzling questions: Is a restaurant a place that’s open to minors at all times? How near to closing time does its kitchen stay open? What kind of food items is it selling after 11 p.m.? Is a bag of chips a food item?
They are questions the council has debated before, and the answers matters to restaurant owners paying as much as $25,000 a month in rent.
“I am exhausted by the amount of time I have spent talking about the food and alcohol ratio,” Councilmember Michael DiVirgilio said Tuesday night, which marked the third in a series of public hearings over the last six months. “That exhaustion, connected to the very limited impact it has on results, yet the very real uncertainty it leaves in the air for all of us, particularly the business owners, has led me to be interested in the kind of concept that the planning commission came up with for us today.”
The planning commission’s concept came from a council direction issued after several downtown establishments that had violated other laws were found, in audits, to be making more money from alcohol than food.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Community Development Director Ken Robertson presented the proposed amendments to Title 17 of the Municipal Code, which defines a restaurant as an establishment that operates “like a bona fide eating place,” maintains as its primary function the sale of prepare food during all business hours, allows entry to minors for most opening hours, and keeps the kitchen open until 30 minutes before closing. Theordinance retains the 50-50 ratio, which means a restaurant has to record equal sales of food and alcohol, (although a restaurant that sells just beer and wine, and not all liquor, has to derive 65 percent of its sales from food). But it is to be used as an enforcement tool and evaluation standard in the event that an establishment is already facing a revocation hearing over its license related to a separate violation.
“My concern is that we never get to that hearing,” Barragan said.
The city has stepped up its enforcement of liquor license conditions. Last year it issued 600 citations for alcohol and public nuisance violations. Police Chief Sharon Papa voiced her support at Tuesday’s meeting for the amendments proposed by the planning commission.
“I don’t think you’re ever going to get 100 percent no mistakes, ever, but I think [the licensed businesses] have all exhibited a very responsible approach to what they’re doing. Everybody’s taking this seriously and I think it’s [time to] start going down a road of trust,” she said.
Business owners voiced frustration about the council’s meddling – Tuesday night’s buzzword was “micromanaging” – in the terms of their liquor licenses, which were written by the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to regulate the sale of alcohol.
“We’re really trying to reinvent the wheel here,” Seth Weiss, owner of Underground Bar & Grill, told the council. “There’s a perfectly good definition of restaurant, completely sensible, written by the people whose sole job is to regulate alcohol.”
He said if an establishment was operating as a restaurant and obeying the terms of its liquor license, it shouldn’t have to be evaluated according to the breakdown of its sales.
“There’s a famous Supreme Court case regarding pornography – you know it when you see it. It’s the same.”
Other business owners spoke about how the council won’t need a 50-50 ratio to shut down an establishment committing real violations like dealing drugs or serving minors.
Councilmember Carolyn Petty made a motion to introduce the ordinance with some amendments. Among them, that the kitchen should be open until 60 minutes before closing and that if a restaurant sells only beer and wine it’s weighed on the same 50-50 measure. The council approved the motion 3-2, with Hany Fangary and Nanette Barragan dissenting. ER