I own a small restaurant with under 50 seats in Alexandria, VA. We are known for our premium cocktails and food. We are regularly promoted by our local tourism board as one of the unique reasons to visit Alexandria, VA, I have a small staff of under 15 people. I write in support of SB168 for these reasons: 1) The paperwork required to meet current ABC rules is burdensome on a small business. 2) Since Covid, prices have gone up significantly, making it more difficult to hit the ABC food ratios. 3) We specialize in premium spirits. Unfortunately, because of the cost of these ingredients, we are limited in what we can offer our customers as higher priced spirits make it harder to meet current ABC food ratios.

I am writing and I am also hoping to be able to speak today in support of Senator Reeves bill SB168. I own five restaurants in Virginia Beach/ Norfolk from high end to college themed restaurants. I have been trying for many years to change the mbar and now more than ever it is needed. The cost of operating in just the last two years has grown between 8-12% depending on the restaurant's location and client base. Kitchen labor over all is up 40% and front of house salary labor is up 18% because of min wage increases. I am having to have to keep many of my high-end bourbons, tequilas, and other craft cocktails much lower than I could charge because an increase would challenge meeting my mbar ratio. Rise food prices have already forced us to increase menu items and to be honest there truly is a limit on what the average person is willing to pay for a hamburger, steak, or any of the normal items on a restaurant's menu. These price increases I cannot control, and the increases are just to maintain our simple small profit margins. The continued increase in daily operations is crippling the industry and the mbar gives many of us no option to increase prices in an area that the customer is willing to pay more for. This revenue in being able to raise drink prices is money to pay for higher wages, better benefits, and to make up lost money on popular menu items that keep customers coming in the restaurant but are starting to be almost too expensive to keep. I meet with over a dozen locally owned restaurant owners at the oceanfront in VA. Beach regularly to discuss the industry and how we can help each other. We are all in agreement that this bill would a positive and immediate impact on our businesses. I also have been talking with Industry Consulting, they are a restaurant consulting firm located in Hampton Roads and represent over 100 restaurants and hotels around the state. They also support this bill and believe it's impact would greatly benefit many of their clients (I can email you a list of all the restaurants represents upon request). I am hoping to be able to speak in person but wanted to leave this comment just in case. There are real family run restaurants that need some relief of the pressures put on them buy the MBAR and this bill would greatly help them. We think all restaurants/ bars should have kitchens and sell food; we think that operators should be responsible in their operations as well. But it is hard to understand why we small business have to follow an MBAR format when the state carved out exceptions for Ampitheater's, concert venues, breweries, and many other new ABC licenses that can offer or sell spirits and not have to sell food or be required to file an mbar. We will always follow the law and not do anything to jeopardize our businesses, so we urge once again to move this bill forward to give real working-class family's some help.

The R Street Institute urges your support of SB168 as drafted and passed by the Senate. Please see the attached long form testimony attached.

Having worked over 13 years in various restaurants in this state, all of which served alcohol, I have seen first hand how burdensome and stress inducing the current food to alcohol ratio can be. I understand that it was in place to prevent bars from popping up on every corner, but now there are breweries on every other corner and they don't even have to worry about ratios. If anything, this encourages restaurants to raise food prices and lower alcohol prices which translates to people being more likely to order another round of shots vs another round of appetizers. This also prevents restaurants that serve cheap food from selling higher end alcoholic beverages. After all of the hardships restaurants and their owners have put up with over the past few years, this bill might take one small burden off of some of their backs. This change is long past due and I fully support this bill. Thank you for taking the time to read my opinion.