POST-PANDEMIC PLANS: A simple proposal to aid Canadian bars and restaurants

Adam McDowell calls upon the nation to make drinking out cheaper … when it's safe again

We love our bars and restaurants and we’re doing what we can to keep them going. 

We’re buying gift cards for meals we plan to have in the future. We’re ordering delivery (though the food just ain’t the same that way — not to mention that restaurants can get a lousy deal via certain services). 

In some jurisdictions, we can now have bars and restaurants deliver booze to us, even in the form of cocktails, so damn right we’re doing that. (And as my fellow Moose Milker Christine wrote about this week, some Toronto cocktail bars are doubling as grocers, too — milk and mai tais delivered to your door. What a time to be [trying to stay] alive!)

Will all of that support be enough to keep our beloved spots on life support? 

Playing on the safe side is the spirit of the times. Accordingly, I have another idea for how we can help bars and restaurants survive COVID-19: Let them buy alcoholic beverages at reduced wholesale prices. 

It is a surprisingly little-known fact that drinking and eating establishments in this country pay the same prices as civilians do for alcoholic products — or even more (the price for most beer in Ontario, for example, is higher for licensees than for the public). According to Restaurants Canada, only Alberta and PEI allow establishments to buy all types of alcohol at wholesale pricing. 

Quite simply, markups have to be high in order for a restaurant to make a profit. This is why it is so much more expensive, in most of this country, to drink out than in. This situation explains the Canadian tradition of “pre-drinking,” the thought of which left my friends and colleagues aghast when I lived in England.** 

(**OK, but when I lived over there the last call was a barbaric 11 p.m., so people had to keep a bottle of vodka handy at home in case friends came over for impromptu after-drinking. That was worse, I think?) 

Frankly I’ve been complaining about this issue for years and this is just my opportunity to bring it up yet again. It’s a drag on our national social life; it has been for decades (since Prohibition I suppose?). I’ve personally long admired the conviviality of bars in locales, such as the U.K. and Japan, where pricing and regulations seem to encourage public as opposed to domestic drinking. 

I don’t even like people, honestly, but I would kill to be able to bump elbows and eavesdrop on after-work gossip at a noisy Manchester or Tokyo happy hour right now. Especially now.

Restaurants Canada agrees with me that Canadian establishments should have the freedom to negotiate better prices for booze than you and me, potentially making a barstool more attractive, financially speaking, than drinking in front of the Netflix. But I guess citing that is cheating — lobbying for restaurants is their job. 

So would you believe the competition commissioner of Canada (a Trudeau government appointee)? He wrote to the governments of Ontario and British Columbia last year to argue that the present situation: 

drives up prices for consumers, as establishments must add a mark-up on the retail prices to generate a profit … [Conversely] by allowing bars, restaurants, and hotels to buy products at proper wholesale prices, stronger competition may lead to lower prices for consumers.

If your corner bistro or favourite pub could buy a $15 bottle of wine for $7.50, it might pass most of the savings on to you and reduce the price per glass from something like $9 to $5. Mightn’t that lure you out of the house to enjoy the company of fellow humans? Hmm?

Alternatively, establishments might continue to charge the customary amount for drinks and use the increased profit to recover financially, stay in business, and continue to serve you. 

The point is that higher margins for booze would give the eateries and drinkeries that we love a more forgiving margin for survival as we all face what is shaping up to be (ominous music) the worst economic downturn on record. 

So please let’s do this. As soon as it’s safe to go outside, I think we’re all going to crave the comfort of our favourite watering holes and nibbles, and a drink — ideally an affordable one — and company to share these things with. 

Soon we’re going to need bars like never before. 

Photo: Prohibition is repealed in Chicago, 1933. Courtesy the John Binder Collection/Smithsonian Institute.