Should the City Council pass Schiff's Late-Night amendment?

​Late-night eats in downtown Minneapolis will extend even later if council member Gary Schiff's proposed Late Night Food ordinance amendment passes when it comes before the Minneapolis City Council later this summer. Schiff told the MN Daily that he was concerned about the chaos caused by downtown's simultaneous 2 a.m. bar close. The idea behind the proposed amendment is to encourage downtown nightlife seekers to sop up the alcohol they've imbibed with food (restaurants would still have to stop serving alcohol at 2 a.m.) before heading home and to break up the crowds so police aren't saddled with monitoring one, massive departure.

The proposal isn't breaking much new ground. Other neighborhoods, including the U of M area, allow restaurants to serve past 2 a.m., and during the 2008 RNC many spots (nine establishments, including three strip joints) applied for permits to stay open and serve the public until 4 a.m. without incident. (If you're wondering about the drunk line at Pizza Luce, they're allowed to serve food after 2 a.m. only because food sales make up 60 percent of the restaurant's income.)

Schiff has established himself with a foodie-friendly agenda this year that so far has also included work on a new microbrewery proposal (right now, in Minneapolis, microbreweries can't sell their beer unless they also serve food, and the proposal would relinquish that requirement) and sidewalk food cart legislation.

Regarding the Late Night amendment, Schiff started a Facebook page to answer questions and collect support. Our current favorite comment:

Dave Sweeney
Minneapolis is still such a fucking cow town in so many ways... for the longest time all we had was Perkins and Embers...or weird pizza places where you could get a gyro calzone with bullet holes in it...