No alcohol sales on Sunday, and you cannot sell alchol within a certain distance from a church or school. Considering this is World O’ Churches - it’s not like they’re all concentrated in one area, or something, they’re side by side with homes, businesses, strip malls, etc - this basically means that if you go to one gas station you can buy a can of beer, but if you go to another you can’t, and it’s nearly impossible to keep track of which is which.
In restaurants, you can’t serve alcohol to just anybody: it has to be a private club. Of course, what this has resulted in is hundreds of “private clubs” - one at each restaurant, establishment, bowling alley, etc - with free membership, just to satisfy the letter of the law.
Are you sure this was an actual law? I’ve been to many restaurants - large and small - where this is just a rule of the establishment.
I remember one restaurant that opened downtown here when I was in high-school. They didn’t have a policy like that at first, but a lot of students started going there at lunch, buying drinks (non-alcoholic, of course) and sharing meals.
Since the place had a fairly limited seating area, they instituted a rule where you had to order a meal to get a drink. And you couldn’t just order an appetizer either. I believe they actually used a minimum price as the rule, based on the lowest priced actual “meal” on their menu.
Fortunately, their meals were really cheap for the amount of food you got. I ordered just a poutine for lunch one time, and couldn’t finish the huge plate I got for two reasons - I was getting really full, and I was going to be late getting back to class.
In Texas, to this day, liquor stores are closed by law on Sundays; you can buy beer and wine at the grocery store, but not until past noon. And if you go to a restaurant and order alcohol before noon on Sundays, you have to have food with it.
Liquor stores also have to close by law at nine o’clock, and liquor stores are the only place you can buy liquor. Beer/wine sales at grocery/convenience stores have to stop at midnight except on Saturdays, when for unknown reasons you can purchase til one.
You can drink in bars til two, however…and if I’m not mistaken, you can buy alcohol again at eight in the morning. Seven a.m. if you’re in a bar. (Some bars open at seven a.m. for third-shifters.)
You cannot buy alcohol to-go from any establishment that serves liquor, but you can buy beer to-go from places that only serve beer and wine. They are two separate licenses…but what I don’t understand is that even if you want beer to go, you can’t buy it from me just because I sell liquor as well. (I bartend.) And I do not know if this only applies to the Riverwalk, but I would assume so b/c I’ve never heard of any other bar in the city selling beer to go. Something about the river being a “state park.”
Now, try explaining all this crap to thirsty tourists in downtown San Antonio. It’s Barrels O’ Fun. sigh
I don’t know about Manitoba, but that was definitely the law in B.C. until just a couple of years ago. The government liquor stores here are still closed on Sundays, though off-sales are open, and you can’t get beer or wine at the grocery store.
Saskatchewan is/was the same: a licensed restaurant can’t serve anything alcoholic without a meal to go with it.
Another pub rule I forgot is that a patron can’t have any more than two drinks on the table at a time. The standard order when I was there was ‘Two draft, please.’ A friend of mine (back in the 70s when we were both young and foolish) would order another pair when the waiter brought the first two, and be ready for them when he came back.
Beer was always served in a glass somewhat like a taller, heavy-footed version of an old ‘Coke glass’, with a measure line near the top so you could tell if the bartender was shorting your serving.
In this here backwoods hick town (see location) they just finally made it legal for liquor stores to be open on Sundays (if they close some other day of their choosing to make up for it; in our neighborhood none have opted to do this); I’m pretty sure they still have the “no beer sold before noon on Sundays” thing going on (although the last time I ran headlong into the rule was when I was living on Long Island four years ago), and even though beer is a legal beverage you can’t consume it outdoors unless you’re in your own back yard or something.