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alphonso wrote:It makes a lot more sense to me for the TABC to license the building red or blue based on the primary nature of the business--in this case an entertainment venue. To view the entertainment venue by an ancillary service that just happens to operate in the same building seems to me to have the tail wagging the dog.

The problem with this is the law does not allow it. The law refers to the licensee, which is the business getting the license, not the property or property owner. If the licensee makes more than 50% from alcohol sales, it is a red license. The business owner gets to decide how to structure the business. TABC only gets to answer the question of whether ot not the business makes 51% or not.

A hypothetical: If a restaurant that had both a bar and a dining area was owned by the city would they determine the 51/non 51% of the entire restaurant based only on the operation of the bar, or of the operations of the entire entity?
Would they create two different business, one for the bar and one for the kitchen, and put the whole operation under license through the bar? If they did, it would be contrary to how all other restaurants are determined to be red or blue.

This is actually covered deep in the TABC rules and laws. If the businesses are owned by the same person or group of people, they are considered the same business by TABC. If they are actually separate businesses, they get separate licenses. If not, then both get combined as one business for the purposes of the license. And TABC does investigate and file felony fraud charges for lying on applications about this.

So, if the city owned a building and wanted to contract out the services, they could build a restaurant and they could build a bar. Say this building is the Hemisfair tower and Jim's gets the contract for the restaurant at the top. Jim's does not want the license in their name. The city could contract out to a completely separate company, say to me, to operate a bar. The premises (the whole tower) would then be posted as a 51% location. But if Jim's created a separate company to run the bar portion, TABC would say it is all one company and it would not make the 51% rule.

The system could be manipulated to ban guns, if someone wanted to. But so far, I don't think anyone in San Antonio management is that smart. After all, they do allow the same contractor to serve food and alcohol in the tower, and they allow the same caterer that you are required to use to sell food and alcohol in the convention center. They would separate those if they were trying to ban guns, especially at the convention center (where they have tried by posting the old 30.05 signs).

alphonso wrote:I called a manager and he said "no guns" and that they had signs at the door and that the whole place was 51% (which simply can't be true).

I cannot find the Majestic listed on the TABC site.

Just a guess, the TABC has the Majestic listed under the name of the management and is allowing a city-owned building to be posted in violation of the law.

No need for a lawyer. This is a legal situation and we have discussed it before. The license is in the TABC site under the name of Facility Concession Services, Inc. It lists it as a red sign license, which is within the law.

Here is how this happens. TABC makes the decision based on what is reported to them on the application. The application asks for the breakdown of food, alcohol, and other sales from the licensee. This is the key point, it is the licensee information. In this case, the concessionaire makes more than 50 of his sales from alcohol since no one really goes to that theater to eat. They make nothing from the gate, so the admission price is not counted in the calculation.

The license applies to the whole premise unless part is lined off on the application. In a case like this, they want the people to be able to take their drinks to their seats, so nothing in the theater gets lined off. So, the whole theater is 51% and properly posted by the law.

We have seen this and discussed it before in respect to bowling alleys, ice skating rinks, and similar locations where the building owner is not operating the bar. I think we might have even discussed this very theater once also. There is no way to write the license based on the income of all of the businesses in the building while still allowing the patrons to take their drinks around the building. After all, if you owned the theater, would you tell the bar contractor how much money you were making? It might affect the contract price, which is not generally considered a good thing.