Haircuts and highballs?
Surrey city council gave the nod Monday for a South Surrey barber shop to serve liquor, but not without hearing some scathing opposition first.
The applicant, TPC Holdings Ltd., asked for a liquor primary license for the Trendzone Barber Shop. at Unit 110 3211-152 St., to serve liquor as an “added service for customers,” proposing a maximum occupant load of 25 people with proposed hours of operation for alcohol service from 11 a.m. to no later than 9 p.m. Sunday through Saturday.
The application was roundly attacked during a virtual public hearing on Monday before council.
“What ridiculousness is this?” South Surrey resident Ivan Scott demanded. “Any council that approves such an application does not deserve to be a city council. They are a myriad of suitable establishments – restaurants, pubs and liquor stores – selling liquor within a one-kilometre radius of this ridiculously proposed establishment. Generally customers drive to a barber shop alone in a car and therefore everyone who arrives there to have a haircut and has a drink will therefore be guilty of drinking and driving after having left.”
Scott also questioned where customers with children will leave them while they’re having a haircut and a drink. “In the car?”
“I am totally opposed to such a stupid proposal,” he told council.
Deb Jack also registered her opposition.
“This is a dreadful idea in my considered opinion,” she said. “We have enough outlets that provide alcohol, we do not need it as barber shops.”
Council received four letters registering opposition to the application.
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The applicant listed on the file is TPC Holdings Ltd. c/o RH Hospitality Solutions Inc. (Rebecca Hardin). She said the business sees this as an “ancillary” service.
“It’s a small family run business,” Hardin told council. “The owner is an entrepreneur and lives and works in the city of Surrey and she’ll be actually creating a few jobs.
“This is a complementary service, if you will, to her business model, is to offer a small option if someone wishes to take in a small beverage.
“It’s a new trend that seems to be happening in the city of Vancouver,” she said, and is “migrating out towards the cities of Surrey and other peripheral cities.”
She said it should be “heavily regulated.”
Before the vote, Councillor Mandeep Nagra asked staff if the barber shop will hire separate staff to serve liquor. “I’m assuming the barbers are not serving liquor at the same time while they’re giving cuts,” he said.
He was told staff didn’t have that information available but can report back to council on it, if council so wishes.
Councillors Steven Pettigrew, Brenda Locke and Linda Annis spoke in opposition to the application.
“We need to at some point I guess draw a line somewhere,” Pettigrew said. “I guess that line’s getting really blurred.”
Before Locke was elected to council she served as executive director of the BC Liquor Licensee and Retailers Association. “I would question that this is a good move for the other, the people that actually are truly in the liquor primary or restaurant industry.
“I find it quite a leap from what I would think as a liquor primary,” she said. “As much as I recognize that people think that they can manage this and that it’s just a little ancillary product, beverage alcohol is never an ancillary product and so I will not support this.”
Annis said she doesn’t think this is what South Surrey needs.
“It’s a stretch,” she said. “I think we don’t need that here right now.”
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