LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KATV) \u2014 The Arkansas Alcohol Beverage Control Board (ABC) upheld its decision to revoke the liquor license of an adult entertainment club in North Little Rock, called the Peppermint Hippo. <\/p>\n
After an 11-hour review, the ABC decided to strip the Peppermint Hippo’s license after discovering a pattern of violations that spanned over nearly the last five years. <\/p>\n
The ABC voted unanimously to uphold a January decision to revoke the club’s liquor license. Scott Hardin, a spokesperson with the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration, says this decision is the result of multiple violations by the club, which date back to a 2021 death. <\/p>\n
John Ribeiro had been at the club during the early morning hours of November 15, 2021, and after being served 21 drinks, he was kicked out of the Peppermint Hippo and was killed shortly after.<\/p>\n
“Mr. Ribeiro was hit by a car on I-40 and killed. That resulted in a civil case, and that civil case…reignited our look into this case,” states Hardin.<\/p>\n
Additional investigations from the ABC, including an undercover investigation, uncovered multiple violations from the day of Ribeiro’s death, including allowing an entertainer and a patron to make physical contact during a performance. Similar violations were discovered on April 12, 2025. <\/p>\n
Hardin says all of these violations played a vital role in the decision by the board to revoke the club’s license. <\/p>\n
“You had, failure to be a good neighbor…at the end of the day, ABC felt like it was a threat to public safety, and with that comes a revocation.”<\/p>\n
According to Hardin, attorneys representing the Peppermint Hippo say that this decision will further damage the club’s business.<\/p>\n
“They said the initial revocation and the media coverage after it really hurt the club…that was with the permit, so this is without the permit. They testified this is going to be tough moving forward.”<\/p>\n
One of the major arguments from the Peppermint Hippo’s attorneys is that they were being targeted by the ABC, but Hardin says that was not the case. He claims that the punishments would have been the same if any other club committed similar violations.<\/p>\n
According to Hardin, the Peppermint Hippo location in North Little Rock was one of two similar clubs in the state that had alcohol licenses. The other was another Peppermint Hippo location that is based out of Fayetteville.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KATV) \u2014 The Arkansas Alcohol Beverage Control Board (ABC) upheld its decision to revoke the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":["post-535935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}