Microbreweries Coming To A Corner Near You?

While the days where churches and liquor purveyors went at each other like cats and dogs are far in the past, Minneapolis still has a few relics of the era. Just try buying alcohol on a Sunday.

Another law bans bars and restaurants that make more than 30 percent of their profit from alcohol sales from operating within 300 feet of a house of worship.

City councilmembers, looking to make life easier for restauranteurs and attract more microbreweries to the city, are scrutinizing that latter law. After passing an ordinance to allow larger microbreweries to serve house-made beer on-site, the Southwest natives of  recently took advantage to open an expanded brewery and bar in downtown Minneapolis. This came after passage of the "Surly Bill" in the state legislature allowed Brooklyn Park-based Surly Brewery to open an on-site bar.

Now, given that many of the city's—and Southwest Minneapolis'—business areas also include nearby churches, councilmembers want to change the proximity law to draw "beer tourists" and open that keg of economic development.

Most restaurants in the city, even those well beyond a football field away from a church, can't make more than 40 percent of their profits from alcohol. Councilmembers are talking about eliminating the proximity clause, making that 40 percent threshold uniform throughout the city.

One prospective microbrewery and taproom in Northeast Minneapolis has come to embody the conflict between Bible and bar, but a quick glance at the map shows a good chunk of Southwest Minneapolis is also covered by the ordinance.

So, if the rest of the city council approves the change on Friday, will that mean a bar will pop up next to every church? No, said city officials: Bars still need to be located in seven contiguous blocks of commercial zoning. It's one reason—along with the bevy of licensing rules governing the sale of alcohol—Kingfield's Councilmember Elizabeth Glidden said she voted for the regulation change. 

"It is difficult to make it work at 70/30 (split between food and alcohol profits), and it doesn't meant that restaurants don't try," she said. "So it's not that you're not seeing restaurants in these locations. It is a very difficult business model."