It’s been more than a week since City Council decided to lay the burden of added regulation on the shoulders of Minot’s downtown restaurant owners, so I reached out to get their reaction to the new law and process that went into the final version. In their own words, here’s what they think of the decision.
If you’re not sure what all this is about, here’s the story on City Council’s liquor license decision.
What's Your Reaction to City Council's Revised Supper Club Law?
-- Chad Schmidt, 10 North Main
Downtown lost bad. The concerned bar owners and any supper club license holders that wanted to participate, met and came up with a compromise. We introduced the compromise to city council and we thought that it was received positively. Next city council meeting it was voted down 10-4 and we still have no idea why. We would like to thank the four council members that voted for downtown small business.
The law will significantly increase labor costs during a time when we are dealing with the eternal construction of the parking structures and street closures that severely limit access to our restaurants. One restaurant already had to close because of these factors.
-- Shanda Cool, Sweet and Flour
Creativity in a Supper Club isn’t adding pull tabs and pool tables. Creativity in a supper club is a group of Chefs waking up at 4 AM every day to hand make all the food they serve their patrons and to match it carefully with handcrafted beverages. Creativity is running a kitchen so that items are made fresh which takes prep time, and caring about your ever changing menu to satisfy customers. The new ordinance, allows for gaming but restricts my kitchen, staffing and food operations. This makes no sense to anyone and it was a failure to address the issue at hand.
-- Nick Holwegner, Souris River Brewing
Confused. A group of concerned supper club license holders and liquor license holders sat down after 2 months of back and forth and found a compromise that satisfied both parties. At the “first” final reading city council members liked that we had worked out a solution, one member even stated, “this was better than anything they had come up with so far.” They delayed the decision for another month to work out the details and then voted a completely different ordinance into law. In the end, they didn’t address any of our concerns as business owners.
-- Jeremy Mahaney, Starving Rooster
We’re disappointed with the decision. We’ve invested a lot in creating a new, unique dining experience for Minot and having more rules and laws to follow makes life just that much harder. And frankly, I’m a little surprised at how the whole process worked. I thought the Supper Club owners and the bar owners had worked out a compromise that was fair to everyone, so to have all that work disappear in the end is frustrating.
-- Erin Hash, The Wurst Place
We were all trying to work together to come up with a compromise that would help drive our businesses and downtown while not taking away from what they [liquor license holders] had as bars and the atmosphere of bars. So, we spent all this time working with the people that were immediately impacted, being the supper club holders and liquor license holders, and then I was really surprised to see that — come the final City Council decision — it was so far from what we had discussed in so many ways. That was a very big let down for me.
