Over on Creative Loafing, I’ve been tracking a back and forth exchange between the Georgia Restaurant Association (who has asserted that the city is cracking down on restaurants allowing BYOB) and the mayor’s office (who asserts that there is no such crackdown). It’s a developing story, but for now we know that several restaurants in Atlanta have actually stopped offering BYOB, which is likely hurting both diners and restaurants in the city.
Hopefully restaurants around town can resume their BYOB practices without any cause for concern – it certainly sounds like the city believes that to be the case. In the meantime, I’ve asked the city some follow up questions that should fully ease concerns and push this dialog forward.
As pointed out in the article on Creative Loafing, the city-established Alcohol Technical Advisory Group II had made a wide range of recommendations to the city council last year that were never acted on, including a recommendation to simplify the city’s ordinances as they relate to BYOB. If the city acts upon those recommendations now, situations like this will certainly be prevented in the future. Wouldn’t that be nice?