Bar to stand up to closure

A Hamilton bar has been shut down by the Liquor Licensing Authority for encouraging "vertical drinking".

The Pie Lab, on Victoria St, was before the authority to answer charges of selling alcohol to intoxicated people and selling a potent shot mix – The Pie Lab 151 – made with 75.5 per cent Bacardi 151 and a "secret mix".

Investigators said they found "red spew" on the floor at least 10 times between July 2009 and July 2010 and a patron slumped at the bar in front of the bar's general manager, Rey Estuye.

The Alcohol Advisory Council (Alac) said the bar sold shots coupled with speed drinking, had poor sanitation, indifferent food and was a "relatively shabby and small premises with a lack of seating".

Mixed with young patrons, this resulted in liquor abuse and promoted "vertical drinking" (where there was limited seating), Alac said.

The authority ordered The Pie Lab to be shut down on August 18.

Bar owner Benji Henwood said he and his co-owner, Mr Estuye, were "gobsmacked" by the decision and would appeal.

"We were a bit stunned at the severity of the punishment considering after nearly five years of trading they only found two people that were intoxicated in the bar. No [people] underage, no violence," Mr Henwood said.

Of an authority remark about a customer eating a pie out of a paper bag, he said "what are we supposed to do at 2am, roll out the fine china? It's just unrealistic".

Mr Henwood said groups of police walked past his bar up to five times a night, three times a week over the past five years and never found any trouble.

The red spew could have been from any one of the 14 drinks they sold or any other bar sold, he said.

It was the "worst time in the world" to be in front of the authority. "[Especially when] you've got kids in Auckland dying in their car drinking a bottle of vodka. Then when they put an expert in saying drinking shots is just as bad, the judge just stops listening [to you]. You're going to struggle when an expert gets up and says something like that."

He said The Pie Lab was in the midst of having pokie machines installed to give customers other activity options rather than just drinking.

Alac manager of strategy and research Dr Andrew Hearn, who testified at the hearing, applauded the decision to shut down the bar and said "speed drinking" or "vertical drinking" was a culture similar to that in bars in the United Kingdom.

Such bars encouraged binge drinking, "a major contributor to alcohol-related harm, including violence and adverse health outcomes".

Waikato District Health Board health protection adviser Ross Henderson said The Pie Lab was not a hospitality environment by any normal standards. "What was really on trial here was the speed-drinking, shot-bar environment ... this is a liquor-abusive way of serving and consuming alcohol. This decision sets a very important precedent."

Mr Estuye's general manager's certificate was also suspended for 31 days.

The Pie Lab has until August 5 to lodge its appeal.

- © Fairfax NZ News