Cate and Chad Battles, owners of The Bywater, say the law is also a hardship on business owners. Although The Bywater operates as a lifetime membership club, Cate Battles says they currently have more than 20,000 membership applications on file, all of which must be directly accessible for ABC review any time the bar is open. Battles enters all the applicants into a computer spreadsheet, which staff members can access on iPads and iPods behind the bar and at the door.
“It’s not that I have any issue obeying the rule, I just don’t understand why it’s there” says Celeste Adams of Burger Bar, a beer and shot joint that has been around for nearly 70 years. “It happens every single time someone walks in the door. ‘Do you have a membership?’ ‘Would you like to buy a membership?’ Or ‘do you have your membership card?’ And then people don’t have their membership cards on them, and they have to fill out the whole form again and pay for a new card. Or they have 35 different memberships in their wallet, their wallet is huge and they don’t want to carry it. I just don’t necessarily know what the point is anymore.”
And now, it’s happening all around the city but most people don’t know why. It all comes down to North Carolina A.L.E. law, but it hasn’t been strictly enforced in the last 10 years here.
The law basically lays out what types of places are allowed to sell alcohol. Restaurants can, but they need to make most of their money off of food. There is no real provision for a “bar.” Instead, there’s a thing called a “private club.”
According to state alcohol laws and regulations, all private clubs must have memberships. Some places even sell food but can’t qualify as a “restaurant” unless they sell 30% more in total gross sales of food and non-alcoholic beverages.
