Drinks liciences

[lizzy h]

hello there,

We run a b and b in Limousin and currently have a No 1 drinks licience to serve wine and beer with meals, does anyone know if you can have a better one ie serves beer and wine etc on its own, i dont want a full bar or resturant licience is there a one inbetween and how much does it cost?

Liz x

[Miki]

We run a b and b in Limousin and currently have a No 1 drinks licience to serve wine and beer with meals, does anyone know if you can have a better one ie serves beer and wine etc on its own, i dont want a full bar or resturant licience is there a one inbetween and how much does it cost?

Without getting my little book out, I am afraid that No is the real answer for you.

A number one licence as you call it, is the "petite licence" allowing you to serve certain drinks but only with food.

If you wish to serve drinks without meals, you are now entering the realm of hotel, campings, bars etc. A Class 4 licence, which bars have to have, would be hard for you to obtain, expensive and a non goer really. You would certainly no longer be classed as a B&B that's for sure !

A class 3 licence is again most but not all types of drinks and sold without food but again really a non player for you. You are supposed to be an amateur and the professional (bars hotels etc) quite rightly jealously guard their business and don't want us little B&B'ers to get their rights, on the cheap !!

So really, no there is no licence for the in between types, make your guests have a meal (sandwich !!) and not too much before or after the meals either, as that can be seen as a grey area !

 

[lizzy h]

thanks for that advice  I didn't want a licience like a public bar it was basically for guests if they want a drink on arrival or don't want a meal just a couple of drinks in their room watching TV. So there isn't anything to cover that thats fine I just wanted to know.

Liz

[Mike1958]

On a similar vain, can anyone advise whether there a licensing requirements where drinks are made available but without direct payment. i.e guests pay a rate for the accommodation and any meals and a limited free bar is available should they wish to use it.

Regards,

 

Mike

[Miki]

[quote]On a similar vain, can anyone advise whether there a licensing requirements where drinks are made available but without direct payment. i.e guests pay a rate for the accommodation and any meals and a ...[/quote]

This is how G de Fr offer it to their members, it is a few pages long and tends to drift in to fiscalité and other legal matters as well. So I shall decipher the parts that concern you.

You may serve drinks, selling or indeed giving within the cost of the meals. What no one expects you to do, is give it free. So somewhere in your pricing, it is believed you will be pricing in the cost of the drink, so in that way, you are indeed selling alcohol.

So what you really must do and it is not difficult to do, is go along in the first instance to tell someone ast the Mairie you are going to be a chambre d'hôte or in your case a  ch. d'hôte doing table d'hôtes in fact. Then of course tell the hôtel des impots that you are now in the B&B business.

Now, you then pop along to the local douanes (it used to be done through the Mairie and the local tabac in some cases, might still be like that in some rural areas? !) and ask for a petite licence for your table d'hôtes. This is either very easy or a pain in the butt, keep your fingers crossed and you may just sail through. It is extremely cheap and is based on the size of the number of people in your area but many report of 10€ or so, some even less.

Whatever happens, drinks can legally only be offered with meals including BBQ's and not given out at any other time of day.

You could try doing it without, I am sure many do but, certainly from what I have read on the matter, the above is the legal side of things.

[Mike1958]

Many thanks Miki,

Your comments reinforced what I thought would be the case. We still have some time as we would like to be open for business for next Christmas in time for the start of the 2005/06 ski season. Before then we have a lot to do to ensure that we are fully compliant on all fronts, as well as solving the small problem of selling our UK house so that we can pack up work and move over permanently.

Regards,

Mike

 

 

[Coco]

Our petit licence was very easy to get and was in fact free!

On a slightly different subject, but may be useful for Mike toknow too; I've just been chatting to the lady at our local tourist office about joining GdF.  We went through the list of compliances in order to do table d'hotes and I had everything covered except certificate d'insurance d'intoxication alimentaire, which I understand is insurance against food poisoning!  Miki, obviously it makes sense to have this but it's not something I had thought about before; is this compulsory for anyone doing table d'hotes or is it just a criteria of GdF?  Also, do you have a rough idea of how much it costs and do you just get it added on to the house insurance or is it a totally different policy?  Our plublic liability was just added to our house insurance and would this cover the food poisoning aspect, as there wasn't actually any mention of public liability in the GdF list, so would this be another way of covering it.  ie, if I have insurance d'intoxication aimentaire AND public liability am I just paying twice for the same cover?

[Miki]

[quote]Our petit licence was very easy to get and was in fact free! On a slightly different subject, but may be useful for Mike toknow too; I've just been chatting to the lady at our local tourist office ab...[/quote]

Coco,

When we bought our place in Brittany, it was run as a restaurant with rooms available. There was little else that met our criteria so this was as close to what we needed, that we could buy. On taking over we continued for a while in the same mode but then very quickly realised, that as the business stood, it was not how we wanted to continue. We had been running a restaurant (as part of other activities) for a while and really found it too much.

So in fact we had insurance for a restaurant in place when we took over, we have since simply carried the same style insurance through to the present time. I mentioned this in another thread, that if I wasn't so lazy ! I would do what a friend of ours does, simply cancel the insurances in the required time scale and get other quotes, just to keep the assurers on their toes and to almost ensure that they are quoting the best price every time ! We seem to be paying a pretty hefty lump for just the B&B & t d'hôtes these days.

Getting back to your post, I am not sure at what stage (either on applying or when accepted ?)you recieve the Dossier Technique from G de Fr and under Avenant des Table D'Hôtes in the Dosssier, it states under Aspectes Réglementaires :

In English and edited for ease of space etc :

1. Inform Mairie 2. Inform Tax Office 3. Apply for the petite licence 4. Apply for an update on the rules concerning kitchen toilets etc. 5. New proprietors must inform their insurance company about cover for le risque d'insurance d'intoxication alimentaire

It goes on to tell you that all meal prices must be set at the start of the year and adhered to. You may tell clients meals on reservation only and the prices must be on show with B&B prices outside (very rarely seen around here !) and behind the doors of each room. They also say that coffee and drinks are included but that has been argued against.

It was a stupid rule, many people will not accept simple table wine and no one is going to put Nuits St Georges etc out as a free table wine !! So we have a carte for wine and often give coffee free but that depends entirely on the client !! The other problem with free table wine is, some clients can be awkward and ask for money off as they only want tap water and no alcohol, same thing for coffee.

Oh yes France is now following England and of course Spain and the USA with complaints for almost anything these days, so much so, that for the first time in its 50 year history, the number of complaints of 2004 have made it neccessary for a meeting to guide members through the complaints procedures both written and verbal !!

We had one complaint and that was for having 16 for breakfast when we are allowed by G de Fr to have only 15 in the BB.  Two were friends staying in our own place over night and who had eaten the night before with a French couple and had arranged to see them at breakfast. I told G de Fr and all was dropped but there can often be nothing like a French snob , people from Paris are the number ones and unfortunately, you sure can find them these days.

It does beggar the question about how sad it is that a couple have taken the time to count the number at breakfast and probably jumped for joy when they found one too many. The complaint came in within a week ! In normal circumstances, 14 eating would spread out over the breakfast hours and some would have already left but it was raining and no one wanted to venture out................still another season arriving, so let's see who is the first per

[Ian Hoare<br>All the best<br>Ian<br>La Souvigne Corrèze<br>http:www.souvigne.com]

[quote]thanks for that advice I didn't want a licience like a public bar it was basically for guests if they want a drink on arrival or don't want a meal just a couple of drinks in their room watching TV. S...[/quote]

Hi Liz,

As others have said there doesn't seem to be any legal way in which you can sell a drink when people arrive. MUST have a Petite Licence de Restauration to permit you to sell coffee, but you've got that. Miki rightly said that's about all we can get.

As for the drink on arrival, what we and most of our friends and colleagues round here so, is to give them a drink free. As for drinks during their stay, that's a bit trickier. I rather take the view that as there's so much less work for multiple night stays, I get more profit and can easily afford a drink or two. Of course, even if you don't charge for a drink, there's nothing to stop a guest giving you a tip at the end of their stay, is there?

[lizzy h]

Thanks for the advice,

Yes we do give  a free drink on arrival and often when you are having a drink yourselves you offer the guests to join you , (for free) and yes we have at times got really good tips, one,  lady gave us 100 euros for three nights and I thought she had made a mistake so told her and she said "no love you keep it you've worked for it," I didn't think I'd worked that hard! or mabye she didnt know how much a hundred euros was!

thanks Loads everyone

Liz

www.holidaybandb-limousin.com