Addison Dent | The Daily Mississippian
Bar or restaurant?
This is the second installment in a four-part series examining different aspects of the Sunday Sales issue. The third part will run tomorrow.
The Oxford Restaurant Association (ORA) has proposed a way to distinguish a restaurant from a bar in light of the possibility for alcohol sales on Sunday.
The organization’s requirements to be defined as a restaurant include 60 percent of an establishment’s annual sales must come from food sales, according to Brad Mayo, alderman for Ward 6.
Currently, 25 percent food sales is the requirement to be allowed to serve alcohol on-premises, according to the state law of Mississippi, a law that the Alcohol Beverage Control (ABC) does not enforce, said Peyton Self, a member of the Alcohol Task Force. According to Self, there is no legal way to discriminate between bars and restaurants.
“It is subjective as far as I am concerned,” Self said. “That is why it is difficult to come up with a solution.”
One possible solution to the Sunday sales issue is a limited opening, which would permit the Board of Alderman to allow establishments the ability to only sell alcohol during limited hours. According to Self, limited alcohol sales would discourage bars who would not make a profit from opening on Sunday, but make it beneficial for restaurants.
This is just one of the options and, according to Mayo, there are multiple options left to explore.
Bar owners, such as Jason Plunk of Taylor’s Pub, said they would like to have the option to choose.
“It would help if we were open,” Plunk said. “No one has ever asked me if I want to open on Sunday, and I just think we ought to have the right to do it.”
Plunk said that he disagrees with opposition to Sunday sales with reasons based on the other days of the week.
“The only reason that people who stood up against it were able to give is the way people act when they go out on Thursday night, and that is certainly no reason not to,” Plunk said.
“I don’t know how you can even compare that; that’s apples and oranges. The people who are for it are not trying to turn Sunday afternoon into Thursday night.”
The Alcohol Task Force’s research into the hometowns of fellow SEC schools such as Athens, Ga., Auburn, Ala., and Fayetteville, Ark., supports Plunk’s argument.
“We have called other towns, and we have found out that it is not nearly as active socially as other days of the week.” Self said. “Our culture here is pretty much (that) Sunday is a day of rest and maybe even reflection.”
