Massachusetts is one of only a handful of states that prohibits restaurants from offering happy hour drink specials to lure in customers. State Senator Julian Cyr is on a mission to change that.
A Democrat whose district includes Cape Cod and Nantucket, Cyr earlier this year filed his third attempt to overturn Massachusetts’ more than 40-year-old ban on happy hours. The policy, he says, is outdated and undermines efforts to draw people back to downtowns diminished by the pandemic and the persistence of remote work.
Cyr says his proposal is only partly about cheap booze. He’s trying to make life a little easier and more enjoyable for a younger generation that’s grappling with Massachusetts’ high cost of living and increasingly leaving the state. Deals such as 2-for-1 drinks would at least pep up the social scene and nudge people to go out more, he said.
“Happy hour isn’t a panacea,” Cyr said in an interview. But “we do have a bit of a fun problem.”
Allowing drink specials is “part of a suite of policies that we need to pursue,” he added. Cyr has also proposed bills on health care, multi-family zoning, and mental health services and was recently tapped to lead the state’s housing initiatives as chair of the legislature’s joint committee.
In 2023, Massachusetts lost about 39,000 residents to other states, more than 10 times as many as in 2013, with Florida and New Hampshire among the top destinations, according to a study by Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. Prime-age workers have accounted for the majority of the exodus in recent years, with the 26-to-34-year-old cohort seeing the biggest volume of departures, the study found.
Happy hours can’t reverse such mega trends, of course. But they can be a useful tool for bars and restaurants to help attract patrons, especially with consumer spending under pressure from inflation, Cyr says. He represents some of Massachusetts’ most sought-after tourist destinations, not just Nantucket but Chatham and Martha’s Vineyard, and he’s concerned about the impact of high costs on vacation demand.
Cyr grew up working at his family’s Italian restaurant on Cape Cod and happy hour deals would have been helpful to get people in the door outside of the peak summer vacation months, he said.
Massachusetts banned happy hours in 1984 in an effort to curb a surge of drunk-driving tragedies. While dozens of other states enacted similar restrictions around that time, almost all of them have since repealed those rules or at least allow full-day price reductions. Indiana became the latest to walk back its happy-hour ban with a law passed last year that allows bars and restaurants to offer drink specials before 9 p.m.
Happy hour restrictions made sense as a community safeguard when they were introduced in the 1980s, but there are now stricter penalties on drunk driving and tougher enforcement of the national drinking age as well as widespread adoption of seatbelt laws, Cyr said.
The prevalence of ride-share services such as Uber and Lyft also helps keep inebriated patrons from getting behind the wheel. Massachusetts has one of the lowest rates of drunk driving in the country, according to research from Forbes Advisor, a consumer finance portal associated with Forbes magazine.
“It’s time we follow the lead of most other states,” Cyr said.
A similar proposal made it into the Senate-approved version of a wider-ranging economic development bill last year but was ultimately removed in the final law signed by Governor Maura Healey in November amid lukewarm support relative to other more urgent measures in that legislation.
Representatives for Massachusetts House Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Healey also didn’t respond to a request for comment.
This time, Cyr still has his work cut out for him. The Massachusetts Restaurant Association has lobbied against loosening happy-hour rules, citing concerns that drink specials would kick off a race to the bottom in a competitive industry that’s already struggling with shrinking profit margins.
Consumers may want the shift, but “it doesn’t mean it makes sense for the industry,” said Steve Clark, the group’s chief executive officer.
Some restaurant owners disagree and say drink specials can help bolster foot traffic and cover their costs during quieter periods.
Source, a gastropub in Cambridge’s Harvard Square, would “absolutely” offer happy hour if Massachusetts allowed it, says owner Daniel Roughan. When “you’re still paying for the food and the liquor to be sitting there, but there’s nobody in your establishment, the economics get challenging,” he said.
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