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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: First Saskatchewan theatre to sell alcohol at movies
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Frank Cox
Film God
Posts: 2234
From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada
Registered: Apr 2011
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posted 01-15-2014 10:57 AM
Broadway Theatre first in Sask. to sell alcohol at movies
quote:
It may now be easier to talk your spouse into seeing an indie film.
The Broadway Theatre is taking full advantage of the changes to the liquor rules by Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming last year. The theatre will be opening their bar during screenings.
Broadway Theatre
The Broadway Theatre will begin bar service at late movies starting this Friday.
"Before, liquor and film could not mix." said Kirby Wirchenko, executive director for the Broadway Theatre.
As of Friday, late night shows will offer gin and vodka, as well as wine and beer.
The Broadway Theatre is the first movie theatre in the province to expand it's beverage offerings.
Wirchenko said the theatre is doing this to keep up with the times, not make money.
"If you buy a five dollar Pepsi from me, I make better money than I do on a $6 beer," he said. "However, if as a customer, you really want that to be a part of your night, I don't want to stop you."
Can't say I'm too impressed -- there's an exactly zero chance that I'll ever sell liquor in my theatre here. If I wanted to run a bar I'd be running a bar.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 01-15-2014 02:44 PM
Over here, many theaters, including chains, have been selling beer in bottles or cans for as long as I remember and selling it in closed cans and bottles doesn't require any kind of license, just some basic procedures to make sure you only sell it to people above legal drinking age.
There is no age segregation in the auditorium and for now, nobody came up with any laws preventing this. It will not be really socially acceptable to start drinking during a matinee or morning presentation of some kiddie movie, but nobody will actually prevent you from being socially inept.
But, I've never really experienced any problems with this, if there are problems with drunks those people were usually already drunk before arriving at the theater in the first place. Also, I don't think that the average theater is the "ideal" place to get drunk anyway.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 01-15-2014 05:30 PM
quote: Marcel Birgelen
Over here, many theaters, including chains, have been selling beer in bottles or cans for as long as I remember and selling it in closed cans and bottles doesn't require any kind of license, just some basic procedures to make sure you only sell it to people above legal drinking age.
Interesting: in the UK, the distinction is between whether it is sold for consumption on or off the premises, not whether it is sold in open or sealed containers. Therefore, an establishment that in my new home would be called a liquor store (i.e. a retail outlet that exists solely or mainly to sell booze) is known as an "off licence" (or colloquially, an "offie") in Britain. The term means that it is somewhere that is licensed only to sell alcohol to be consumed off the premises, as distinct from a pub or bar, which is licensed to sell booze that can be consumed on its premises. This seems to me to make sense, because a large number of people congregated in one place and drinking represents a potential public order problem, but somewhere that sells booze to 100 different people who then disperse to 100 different places to drink it does not.
However, an "on license", so to speak, isn't a carte blanche to do what you like. Local councils can and do attach specific conditions to the licences of specific establishments, usually beacuse of local residents nearby (e.g. no drinking in a pub's back yard after 8pm to keep the noise down - that sort of thing). The last theatre I worked full time at had a licence that allowd it to serve booze in the bar within the theatre building, but not to allow customers to take it into the auditoria. This struck me as a reasonable compromise, personally: it allowed people to socialise with a drink or two before or after the movie, but reduced the chances of sloshed 'n stupid behaviour during the film itself.
I don't think I've ever been to a cinema outside the US that allowed drinks to be consumed in the actual auditorium; and come to that, only one in the US (it was a single screen independent in Anchorage, but I can't remember the name).
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 01-16-2014 03:03 AM
quote: Leo Enticknap
Interesting: in the UK, the distinction is between whether it is sold for consumption on or off the premises, not whether it is sold in open or sealed containers. Therefore, an establishment that in my new home would be called a liquor store (i.e. a retail outlet that exists solely or mainly to sell booze) is known as an "off licence" (or colloquially, an "offie") in Britain.
When it comes to alcohol, you get into all kinds of weird, inconsistent regulations, that not only vary between countries, but even states/provinces, counties, etc.
In the Netherlands for example, historically, the license to sell alcoholic beverages was mostly coupled to hygienic aspects, that's probably why there is still no special license for selling alcoholic beverage with low ABV in "closed containers". The laws have been changing although, especially to include all kinds of enforcements. The legal (public) drinking age of alcoholic beverages of < 15% ABV has been 16 years for as long as I remember, but that has been raised to 18 years starting the first of January 2014. But selling anything above 15% ABV still requires a special licenses, even if it is in a store and in "closed containers". In general, those extra rules don't lead to anything but some stupid situations: Some supermarkets now event don't sell alcohol to you, if you're accompanied by a minor (supposedly to limit the possibility of the adult buying it for the minor, which is of course hogwash), but that same supermarket often also has a self-checkout, where you pay your scanned products at a terminal, nobody is verifying your age there...
The UK is also quite special, because it actually forbids minors drinking alcoholic beverages at home, whereas most countries only limit the sale to minors/people below drinking age and drinking in public spaces, although some US states also seem to limit this. And then there are those Arabic countries that have their own weird interpretations of when and where it is legal to drink alcohol...
In the US, there also seems to be a great deal of inconsistency regarding age segregation. Some states don't allow people below legal drinking age to be present on premises where alcohol is being consumed, often resulting in rather hilarious situations, where one below drinking age can't be in the bar area of a certain establishment, but where it's no problem to sit at a table in the restaurant area few feet away.
quote: Leo Enticknap
I don't think I've ever been to a cinema outside the US that allowed drinks to be consumed in the actual auditorium; and come to that, only one in the US (it was a single screen independent in Anchorage, but I can't remember the name).
Many, if not most cinemas in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany serve alcohol that can be consumed in the auditorium. Many of them also have some kind of cafe/bar and need proper licensing for that anyway, if you go for this license, you will surely want to include your auditoria, even if you might yet decide against serving alcohol there.
So called "service cinemas", where food and drinks are delivered at your seat are still a niche market around here, so getting drunk at a theater would, in most cases, involve getting up several times during the movie to go for a "refill". That alone would not be socially acceptable. Also, selling alcoholic beverages to obviously alcoholic-impaired people, which is usually even legally prohibited, would be utterly stupid anyways.
Besides all the confusing laws and regulations, the most prominent thing here is just common sense. As I stated before, the only problem I've had with drunk people and cinemas were those that arrived there in an already intoxicated state, which can largely be avoided by not letting them in in the first place. For someone with an "out-of-control drinking habit", a cinema auditorium is not really the most ideal place to get drunk.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 01-16-2014 11:12 AM
quote: Marcel Birgelen
The laws have been changing although, especially to include all kinds of enforcements. The legal (public) drinking age of alcoholic beverages of < 15% ABV has been 16 years for as long as I remember, but that has been raised to 18 years starting the first of January 2014. But selling anything above 15% ABV still requires a special licenses, even if it is in a store and in "closed containers".
A system whereby the legal age for drinking beer is lower than that for wines and spirits strikes me as sensible, too (though in this case, the cutoff seems to be wines, as almost all are below 15% apart from sherry and port). Your average 16 year-old is not going to come to any harm from a beer or two in a properly supervised environment, but I wouldn't want them knocking back vodka.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
The UK is also quite special, because it actually forbids minors drinking alcoholic beverages at home...
Not according to this page - and what prompted me to look it up was the memory of growing up in Britain, where it was perfectly normal for parents to give their kids a glass of wine with a meal every now and again (e.g. on special occasions), starting from the low teenage years. So if it ever was illegal for a minor to drink at home, that law was about as widely respected and enforced as the motorway speed limit (i.e. not at all). Assuming that the parents are able to act responsibly (which admittedly nowadays is a big assumption), that strikes me as a good way of doing things, rather than having booze off limits until an arbitrary cutoff date and then risking people go crazy immediately after it.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
In the US, there also seems to be a great deal of inconsistency regarding age segregation. Some states don't allow people below legal drinking age to be present on premises where alcohol is being consumed, often resulting in rather hilarious situations, where one below drinking age can't be in the bar area of a certain establishment, but where it's no problem to sit at a table in the restaurant area few feet away.
ID-ing policies vary, too. I was once in the bar of a hotel at a conference talking to someone who was in his 70s and, not meaning to sound unkind, quite clearly looked it. When I tried to buy him a drink, the waitress asked for ID from both of us! I was 28 (i.e. only seven years older than the minimum age, and so it was just possible that she thought I could have been below it) at the time and therefore thought she was just asking for ID from me. But she then explained, apologetically, that due to anti-discrimination laws in that state (Minnesota), they either had to ID everyone or no-one. And so, in order to avoid falling foul of alcohol age laws as well, they ID-ed everyone. My colleague noted that this was the first time in at least 40 years that he'd had to show his driving licence in a bar.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 01-16-2014 04:22 PM
quote: Leo Enticknap
Not according to this page - and what prompted me to look it up was the memory of growing up in Britain, where it was perfectly normal for parents to give their kids a glass of wine with a meal every now and again (e.g. on special occasions), starting from the low teenage years. So if it ever was illegal for a minor to drink at home, that law was about as widely respected and enforced as the motorway speed limit (i.e. not at all). Assuming that the parents are able to act responsibly (which admittedly nowadays is a big assumption), that strikes me as a good way of doing things, rather than having booze off limits until an arbitrary cutoff date and then risking people go crazy immediately after it.
It's Wikipedia and I didn't check the references, so let's take it with a grain of salt, but that page almost begins with: The United Kingdom is the only country that has a minimum legal age for drinking alcohol in a home. In many cases, people even don't know better. If I would ask a random person around here what the minimum drinking age at home is, most would probably come up with 16 or 18 years.
But there are also many things that aren't perfectly legal, but just tolerated. For example: Many people think that it's legal to buy and use limited amounts of canabis in the Netherlands, but it's not, it's just being tolerated to some extent and that "policy of tolerance" has never been under such a pressure as in the last few years. In some places in the U.S. it's now actually more legal than in the Netherlands.
quote: Leo Enticknap
But she then explained, apologetically, that due to anti-discrimination laws in that state (Minnesota), they either had to ID everyone or no-one. And so, in order to avoid falling foul of alcohol age laws as well, they ID-ed everyone.
Up until about 5 days ago, I've never been asked for an ID when buying a beer, wine or other alcoholic beverage in my whole life anywhere in Europe. In the U.S., that's another story... Many of those ID laws have been around here too, but nobody really cared about it, since there was no real hard enforcement and it was always a hard case to prove (the general consensus was, somebody needs to show his/her ID when he/she looks 25 or younger). But since they drove up both penalties and are actually enforcing it now, everybody went nuts.
I could go on for a while, but the discussion would become a very political one. Let's keep it this way: Trying to solve social problems with more laws is usually doing just the oposite...
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