How liquor license legislation could make Boston's restaurant scene more equitable

Paris Alston: This is GBH’s Morning Edition. A bill that would grant Boston more liquor licenses is making its way through the state legislature. It’s already passed in the House, and now the Senate is making amendments, with a vote set to take place before the legislative session ends on July 31st. Joining us to talk more about this is Nick Korn, a partner and researcher with Offsite, an organization that develops training for the restaurant industry. Hi there Nick. Thanks for being here.

Nick Korn: Hi, Paris. Thanks for having me.

Alston: So how would this bill change things as they are now?

Korn: So this bill would create some additional restricted liquor licenses that would be issued to specific zip codes throughout the city that historically have been underserved by past liquor license laws.

Alston: And we have talked a little bit about this here on Morning Edition as part of our series Nightlife in Boston. Remind us why it is so difficult to get a liquor license.

Korn: Sure. That’s a complicated question for sure. There’s about 1,200 liquor licenses in the whole city of Boston, and that was created in a law at the end of prohibition, so basically 90 years ago, and hasn’t changed appreciably since then. And basically with that hard cap, we end up with a zero sum game in Boston. So every time you see a new place open somewhere, maybe downtown or inthe Seaport, it basically means that somewhere else had to close somewhere else in the city. And so what we’re seeing is that essentially we have this pattern of strip mining licenses out of our neighborhoods, especially our neighborhoods of color, and moving down into the Seaport and downtown. So there’s entire parts of our city that are wildly underserved and that have very few liquor licenses.

Alston: And Offsite and the Boston Black Hospitality Coalition drew up a map to illustrate this. And you know that there are 47 times more licenses in Boston’s for the whitest zip codes, versus its for least white. Tell us historically why that is the case.

Korn: Yeah. It follows a pattern of sort of structural racism that goes throughout our entire city. And so basically what we did is we just layered census data over licensing data. So there’s a ton of publicly available information that we just tried to bring together so that we could provide accurate data to inform our legislators and allow them to make data-driven decisions. But the pattern is based on what I said, essentially. So if I knew, let’s say multinational hotel wants to open somewhere downtown, they essentially engage a broker or a lawyer and they need to find an existing license because of that hard cap. So every new place, when you walk down, you know, Seaport Boulevard and you look at all these licenses and all of these restaurants, each one of them sort of has, at the heart of them, like the soul of a neighborhood restaurant that had to close. And you can’t really fault the operators for taking that money. The restaurant industry is exceedingly difficult, and the margins are very small. And so if someone comes along and offers you a six-figure check, it’s really hard to say no. But I fault the system which has created this zero-sum game where to open a new place, you have to close somewhere else.

Alston: And those can sell for like $600,000, right? On the secondary market.

Korn: Exactly. And there’s sort of this like artificial scarcity that’s been created by the state because of our liquor license law. And so this new bill does something really intentional. And so it doesn’t create additional transferable licenses that will be traded and sold on that secondary market. Instead, it creates restricted licenses that are issued to an individual ZIP code. And so basically they wait at the city until someone from that zip code applies and is approved by the city and the state. And then if that business closes or that operator wants to, you know, exit, that license goes back to the city and stays there only to be issued to that zip code. So it sort of like backfills the hole of what’s been dug out and brought downtown into the Seaport.

Alston: So one of those zip codes includes the neighborhood of Mattapan here in Boston. And a few weeks ago here on Morning Edition, we took a walk down the block in Mattapan Square as part of a regular series that I do here. And one of the subjects of that story, Wendell Delk, told us how there used to be multiple bars and nightclubs in the area that ended up leaving, but had they remained, there could have been an opportunity.

Wendell Delk: People driving up and down from the surrounding areas can come and say, hey, there’s people sitting outside. So that probably would have opened it up to a more communicable way of life for Mattapan, where it’d become a melting pot.

Alston: So tell us what is lost when a neighborhood doesn’t have access to this resource?

Korn: Yeah. So there’s countless examples. And then when you really zoom in to one space, you know, you talk to folks in the neighborhood and people remember a given address that used to be a bar, that used to be a restaurant that they had, you know, fundamental memories. They met friends or they got engaged or, you know, any sort of like, life-altering moments. And those spaces are dark. I’ll give the example of a bar in Roxbury. It was Sonny Walker’s.

Alston: Yes, I remember when it closed.

Korn: And then it became C&S Tavern. And then basically what happened is an internationally owned steakhouse that wanted to open in the Prudential Center, you know, went to the family who were already kind of dealing with generational change and succession planning and offered them, you know, a number that was too good to be true. And they took the exit. And so then that historical space, that really like living room of Roxbury, went dark and became a closed space. And if you look at that little strip of Warren Ave., you know, there’s a dollar store and there’s probably five empty storefronts. And so basically what happened is Royal Smith of the Boston Black Hospitality Coalition has been an amazing collaborator on this whole process. He saw this opportunity, and he was able to get one of these restricted licenses to recreate a gathering space, a third space in our neighborhood. And that’s what District 7 Tavern is. These liquor licenses are really about sit down restaurants, right? Sure, there’s going to be bars and taverns, but fundamentally, the sit down restaurant is reliant on a liquor license. And so because of this pattern, we’ve been losing our licenses. And then these neighborhoods essentially just have takeout places and counter service, because if you are in a major metropolitan city like Boston and you don’t own your own building, and certainly plenty of us don’t, the finances of a restaurant just don’t work. And if you go up and down our neighborhoods, including Mattapan, so many of our businesses are quick takeout. So that doesn’t create community. It doesn’t create as many jobs, it doesn’t create as much economic activity. And so this new bill, if and when it passes, it could have a huge impact on our city, on our neighborhoods, our small business owners, and specifically on our small business owners of color in our neighborhoods of color.

Alston: Well, that is Nick Korn, a partner and researcher with the organization Offsite, which develops training for the restaurant industry. Nick, thank you so very much.

Korn: Thank you so much for having this conversation, Paris.

Alston: You’re listening to GBH News.