For Ralph Pinto, owner of Maracas restaurant on Chogm Road, it was a sad day. “I opened this place five years ago. So much effort was made on setting it up, doing the interiors and getting the business going. Now that we can’t sell alcohol, most likely we will not be able to continue,” he rued.
Maracas is an upmarket restaurant very close to NH-17 in Porvorim. When asked if he can move his business outside the 500 meters limit from the highway, Pinto replied, “Location is the key thing in this business. Without the location, it becomes a totally different thing.”
There are several other restaurants along NH-17 in Porvorim like O Coqueiro and Barcode Lounge and Grill, which are not in a position to sell alcohol anymore. Pinto continued, “For us, half of our sales come from alcohol and the remaining half comes from food. But, it’s not as simple. If you don’t serve alcohol, it becomes very tough to sustain in this business because both alcohol and food go together. People, who don’t drink, go to party with people who drink. So, even those who don’t drink will no longer come to your restaurant, if you don’t serve alcohol.”
While restaurants and hotels have shut their bars, for liquor shops, it is the end of the road. Wine shops had mushroomed along highway in Porvorim and in other parts of Goa.
These shops have no business from April 1 and what’s even worse is that they are saddled with unsold stock, which the alcohol manufacturers have refused to take back.
Subhash Verlekar, who had given his alcohol license on rent in Porvorim, said, “The liquor shop is closed now. The person who runs it hasn’t decided yet as to where to move because we can’t do this business anymore along highways.”
He continued, “Rent for such shops is unlikely to be less than Rs 30,000 in Porvorim. If we move to inside areas, there could be other problems too, as these are residential areas. Moreover, we depended upon tourists, who would stop and pick up a bottle. If we move inside, the tourists aren’t going to come. So, the whole business-model changes totally.”
As liquor shop and bar owners gear up to face business-less days, they are going to find it very hard to move to inside areas in many parts of Goa because the state’s land-mass is less. Moreover, it has jungles, valleys and hills at many places, which is going to make things difficult.
