The Mimosa Mandate - Henley Tullos and Casey Rose

Sunday alcohol service could be extended if a proposed bill in the Georgia Senate becomes law. The bill would expand the hours restaurants can serve alcohol on Sunday mornings. State Senator Renee Unterman sponsored Senate Bill 17 which she nicknamed the “Mimosa Mandate.” Right now, private restaurants cannot serve alcoholic beverages before 12:30 p.m. If passed by the state legislature, restaurants could begin serving alcohol two hours earlier.

Unterman and local businesses say it’s a matter of fairness. State-owned businesses, like the Georgia World Congress Center and the Georgia Dome, are allowed to serve alcohol earlier than privately owned restaurants. Travis Birch, co-owner of the Heirloom Café and Fresh Market in Athens, says “It’s a matter of letting local restaurants and local municipalities decide themselves to allow their restaurants in their communities to serve alcohol earlier in the day.”

The Georgia Restaurant Association (GRA) estimates, based on a restaurant case study, that each of the 4,000 restaurants that would benefit from this bill would make an additional $25,000 a year. That would generate an extra $100 million in revenue and $11 million more in taxes for the state to add to their treasury.

Athens, Georgia is home to over 20 brunch restaurants that could benefit from SB-17 according to Yelp. “What it could do for us would be to increase our revenue with very little additional labor costs, so it would increase our profitability for Sunday brunch,” says Birch.

Using the GRA’s math, that would mean an estimated $500,000 in revenue in Athens alone. Some members of the Athens community aren’t convinced that the extension of Sunday alcohol sales would be a good thing for the community.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Cowsert (R-Athens) is the bill’s main opponent. He told the Atlanta Journal Constitution last session that he felt the bill would upset the “fragile compromise” between legislators and the faith community regarding Sunday alcohol sales. Pastor David Mills of Beech Haven Baptist Church in Athens, Georgia says, “The faith community has done about all the compromising because alcohol sales are legal all the time except those few hours on Sunday morning. I don’t know if we’d be in much of a mood to compromise any more.”

Pastor Mills thinks the bill would further hurt the alcoholic community and sees the economic benefits as short-sighted. “The profit really isn’t there,” he says, “What you take in with revenue as far as one hand is concerned, you lose with the other in insurance rates, social services, those kind of things.”

The “Mimosa Mandate” was first introduced during the 2015 Georgia legislative session as House Bill 535. The bill quickly moved through the House of Representatives but was held up in the Senate Rules Committee during last year’s session. Senate Bill 17 is currently in committee in the State Senate. Travis Birch and Pastor Mills both encourage constituents to reach out to their local representatives to voice their position.