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There’s a widespread view in the hospitality industry that liquor rules have not kept pace with how people actually want to use shared social spaces. While there have been meaningful changes introduced since my 2023 story on the subject, the core issue persists: a scarcity of casual venues where you can stand, meet, and mingle with new people from open to close.

Currently, the BC Liquor Control and Licensing Regulation draws a broad distinction between restaurants on food primary licences and bars, pubs, and nightclubs on liquor primary licences. This distinction limits the creation of communal spaces in the city because the liquor primary licence threshold is high enough to deter many operators.

To its credit, the city has chipped away at this in recent years, lifting the moratorium on new liquor primary licences in the Granville Entertainment District, scrapping the distancing rules that kept venues spread thin, and delegating approvals to skip the final council vote. But these were municipal fixes to a provincial framework. The liquor primary path itself remains costly and uncertain because it requires extensive municipal and public input, saddling applicants with costs like legal help and consultant fees. On top of that, there's zoning work, occupancy changes, and costly redesigns. 

With that in mind, it’s obvious why Vancouver’s hospitality scene skews toward sit-down restaurants. When you can get your food primary application approved quicker and cheaper with fewer operating restrictions and less scrutiny, it’s hardly a real choice.

The deeper problem is the binary itself: an operator has to commit to running a seated restaurant or a full bar, with no path for the casual neighbourhood pub in between. That gap is one the city can’t close on its own.

The........

© Georgia Straight