One of our clients opened a nice store that sells various products including a small portion of which that are packages to be mixed with cheese or water, or other substances and then eaten as a snack or dip or spread. You know the kind of stuff you mix up in a little bowl and dip a cracker into. Well, they thought it might be nice if they could allow customers to taste these treats. The dip would be mixed by stirring with a plastic spoon in a plastic throw away bowl and then dipped out by customers with a pretzel or cracker. When used up, everything is tossed into the trash can, simple enough. BUT, they asked the City what permits were necessary expecting some health department concerns.
Believe it or not, they were told they needed to hire an engineer and get professional drawings of the 3 compartment sink and the plumbing for that to the 1500 gallon grease trap that would need to be buried outside under the asphalt. Also they were told that most likely an Architect will be needed to draw the base line drawings for the engineer and to show where in the building the sink would be placed. In addition to the cost of all this professional help and the materials and construction costs, the time to get all this done and the permitting process was a factor.
Another of our customers decided that one of our very nice upscale shopping centers might be a wonderful location for a very nice wine store, the kind that has wines from all over the world at prices from a ten-spot to a couple hundred bucks. Discussions came to the liquor license requirement and they qualified in every way except, the City has a rule that no more liquor licenses can be issued inside the city of Branson IF the license is for packed or bottled liquor. Now, we were not talking about a corner downtown store with iron bars over the windows and MD 20/20 sold by the quart to the poor guy who sleeps on the front steps, NO, I mean a clean upscale wine rack filled establishment with 1963 Chateau Sum-tin-or-udder in the racks and shining sets of long stemmed glassware on the shelves. Now, every city has the right to evaluate and approve or not approve a license, but this City set a moratorium on this type license. This City does not want you to buy a fine bottle of wine at our shopping center and take it home to your home and drink it. However, we were able to get a license to sell you three shots of Tequila and a hotdog at the same location and then you can drive home. Go ahead and explain the morality of that one to my clients. For that matter, why is the City making morality decisions for us regarding a perfectly legal business accepted in 17 other location in Branson. Restriction of trade comes to mind. Why not let the market determine the number of stores. It works for nearly every other business. I assure all of you, if there are too many wine stores the sales volume will decline in them and they will reduce until sales are sufficient again.
The same “Wine” store prospect also considered serving cheese with a weekly wine tasting which took us back to the first example, so they determined cheese and tasting was out of the question even if they got a license.
I know our good citizen friend Yakov has been in this great country for quite a while now, but I wonder if any of these examples remind him of any other country?
More examples of wanton disregard for free enterprise, common sense, and the American way will be published here in the near future.
We at Commercial One Brokers deal with this every day and we know the steps and the side steps necessary to make a good attempt at getting through the bureaucratic mess, but most people only attempt this once in their life. IF you are trying to work your way through all the nightmare by yourself, keep in mind the mess comes from the top down and the staff is only doing their underpaid job the way they are instructed to do so.
Or call us and see if we can help!
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