The bar is also required to make all of its old and current sign-in books available to the ABC at all times, which creates a significant storage dilemma. “We ran out of room at our tiny bar,” says Battles, who adds that she and her husband have had to resort to storing old membership materials at their home.
“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.
