‘No advisory on limiting drinks, it’s about responsible bartending,’ HRAWI’s Pradeep Shetty

Pradeep Shetty, President of Hotel and Restaurant Association of Western India (HRAWI) in conversation with CNBC-TV18 clarified, “There is no advisory limiting the number of drinks. There is neither any direction from the government also. We definitely don’t want to spoil any celebrations. If you are referring to some newspaper article, I think this has been totally misquoted. There has been an advisory which speaks about responsible bartending, responsible celebrations.”

He was speaking on media reports claiming that ‘no more than four drinks will be served to partygoers at New Year’s Eve parties’ in hotels across Mumbai. “And there are slew of measures that as a restauranteur we are supposed to take starting from checking if underage persons are consuming and if somebody is inebriated, how do you take care of him? You offer valet services, offer drivers to send them back home, etc. But nothing on limiting the number of drinks,” he clarified.

“As long as you’re able to hold your drink, we are absolutely fine. If we find somebody who is unable to hold his drink or who is not in his good sense, then of course, the manager or the bartender has to take a call, that’s where responsible celebration and responsible bartending comes in, for which we are advocating that we need to be doing our business,” he said.

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In fact, if you know, it’s the only industry which is working during such time when every other industry shuts down. So, while we are looking forward to serve our guests but we want to ensure that it is safe and responsible at the same time,” Shetty added.

“So largely what happens is, post the midnight is when everybody starts dissipating out and by that time you get a sense of how many people will need such services and there are a lot of these drivers which are available on freelance basis so a lot of restaurants are hiring these drivers and these drivers are available for a cost,” he explained.

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“So, what we do is, we make them link up with these guests who want such drivers. Ola, Ubers are obviously available. In fact we also hire additional valet services on those days, so cars can be left at the place and people can use any public transport or if the valets are there they can also drop them back home. Practically speaking this was done last year and I think this year lot of bars and restaurants have geared up to give these services available for a cost. So, it’s not a problem at all,” he said.