EASTHAM — The select board granted an all-alcohol liquor license for Willy’s World Wellness & Conference Center, doing business as Grateful Café, on July 12, just days before a scheduled Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission (ABCC) hearing on owner Barbara Niggel’s appeal of the board’s Jan. 4 denial of the license renewal.
“The ABCC encouraged the Town and the applicant to attempt to resolve any differences so that the license could be issued,” Town Administrator Jacqui Beebe wrote in a memo to the board.
At the January hearing, Beebe had cited the relocation of the bar and tables from an area adjacent to the kitchen to an area closer to the front entrance on the same floor as a “different license premise,” requiring an application for a new license instead of a renewal. She also argued that Willy’s was no longer functioning as a restaurant.
Niggel’s attorney, Ben Zehnder, argued at the Jan. 4 hearing that food did not have to be hot or prepared on a “particular type of stove” and the relocated service area was within the same floor area with the same exits and entrances.
Since that hearing, Niggel applied for a new food permit to allow the business to heat and serve meals. A common victualler’s license for the property was approved by the board in April.
“We gave her the common vic because she did go through the process with Suzie [Assistant Health Agent Susan Barker], upgraded the kitchen, got the warming devices that she needed to get, and she is permitted for the food,” said Beebe at the July 12 meeting.
Niggel agreed, as part of the all-alcohol license, that alcohol service would be confined to the 34 seats shown in the seating plan submitted to the board, that customers may not consume or possess alcohol outside the service area, that alcohol will be locked and inaccessible when not being served, that a TIPS (Training for Intervention Procedures) certified employee will have visual control over the service area and will ask the front desk person to observe the area when temporarily away, and that the hours of operation would be 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
“Basically, we’re not asking this applicant to do anything that we don’t ask a normal all-alcohol permit to have, but it is new to this establishment, so we just wanted to make sure we have those guidelines in place,” Beebe explained.
“I know we had concerns about where it was going to be located and make sure it was staffed and manned, and it seems those asks were presented,” said board vice chair Aimee Eckman.