“An underage girl walks into a bar . . .” sounds like the first line of a bad joke. For the folks at Nectar’s in Burlington, it was the start of something much less amusing. “Liquor Control routinely runs stings,” explains co-owner Damon Brink. On one Saturday afternoon, “This girl just walks in with her normal ID that says she’s 18, and she tries to buy a beer.”
What happened next was kind of unusual. Even though the staffer on duty, a cook, carded the young woman and refused to serve her alcohol, Nectar’s was punished with a one-day liquor license suspension. Why? The dude who denied her hadn’t passed a state-mandated alcohol certification course. Gripes Brink, “The irony of it is, we actually failed a similar case like that about a year ago, where one of the girls who was certified actually served [an underage person] a beer.” That time, the transgression didn’t cost Nectar’s its license.
To mark the appointed day of atonement – this Wednesday, October 10 – the folks at Nectar’s are throwing a party complete with free gravy fries and samples of house-smoked BBQ, soda and “crystal punch,” a.k.a. water. In an effort to “recoup losses,” which Brink estimates at about $2000, they’ll also sell T-shirts and CDs.
This article appears in Oct 10-16, 2007.
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