Supervisor Stephen Sherrill has made it easier to drink at the movies.<\/p>\n
San Francisco supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to pass the District 2 supervisor\u2019s ordinance that waives rules that put many San Francisco movie theaters at risk of being out of compliance with city code, should they serve alcohol.<\/p>\n
Right now, thanks to a quirk in state law, movie theaters that want to admit kids, serve alcohol, and serve somewhat substantial food \u2014 think slices of pizza \u2014 have to register as a restaurant. That wouldn\u2019t matter except that a city law requires that eateries classified as \u201crestaurants\u201d bring in more than half of their revenue from food.<\/p>\n
The idea behind that restriction was to keep bars from claiming they\u2019re a restaurant when really they\u2019re pouring drinks and serving peanuts, said Lorenzo Rosas, a legislative aide for Sherrill.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s hard for movie theaters to outpace their revenue from, say, ticket sales, with food. \u201cI don\u2019t know how we\u2019d ever get there unless we served $300 truffle popcorn,\u201d said Cody Allen, the executive director of the Upper Fillmore Revitalization Project, which owns the shuttered Clay Theater in Pacific Heights and is backing Sherrill\u2019s legislation, in advance of the Clay reopening this year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Already, there is precedent for this in 2000 legislation<\/a> that allowed nonprofit theaters in the Mission District to serve alcohol.\u00a0<\/p>\n The more-than-100-year-old, single-screen Clay theater closed its doors in January 2020, months before the pandemic would do a number on many of San Francisco\u2019s already-struggling cinemas. (At least 10 theaters<\/a> have closed in the city since the pandemic.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Last fall, Neil Mehta, the tech investor behind the Upper Fillmore Revitalization Project, announced plans to renovate and reopen the Clay in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n Part of the plan to get the cinema profitable, Allen said, is to make the theater do more than just show movies. It\u2019ll host director talks and serve wine and beer on the ground floor. The idea, to use sociology jargon, is to make it a \u201cthird place\u201d \u2014 somewhere that locals can come to hang outside of work and home. The loosened rules around booze would help.\u00a0<\/p>\n Larger chains, like the nearby AMC Kabuki or Regal Cinemas at the Stonestown Galleria, would benefit too: They serve alcohol and are licensed under state law as restaurants, but would no longer have to make more than half of their revenue through food sales.\u00a0<\/p>\n