Black Bull supports an earlier closing

The newest entrant into Palmerston North’s bottle store market would welcome a 9pm closing time.

Black Bull owner Sahil Sharma said it would be ‘‘fantastic’’ if the city council’s local alcohol policy endorsed the mid-evening end time.

Big Barrel owner Baldeep Dhillon has already proposed the 9pm curfew to discourage people returning to off-licences for ‘‘second serves’’.

But while Dhillon said the rule should apply to everyone, including supermarkets and dairies, Sharma was prepared to go one further if the plan applied to bottle stores alone.

The Black Bull liquor store in Rangitikei St closes at 10pm while Sharma waits for a decision from the District Licensing Committee about granting an off-licence for a Milson store.

It has applied to stay open until 10pm.

One of the objectors to the Milson application, Anne Strawbridge, said her fear was that having the Black Bull open so late would tempt people to drink more, because it would be easy to pop out to buy another round.

Sharma said Whanganui bottle stores had agreed to close at 10pm even where licences allowed trading until 11pm.

‘‘And we would be happy to reduce to 9pm.

‘‘For security reasons, it would be fantastic.’’

He said, despite a range of security measures, staff in a liquor outlets late in the evenings felt vulnerable to robberies.

‘‘If off-licences agreed, I would be happy to do it, even if the supermarkets did not.’’

Sharma said bottle stores with a range of premier products were not in direct competition with supermarkets, where customers picked up a bottle of wine or some beer with their groceries.

‘‘Most people come specifically to bottle stores for different products.’’

Dhillon said 9pm closing should be for everyone.

He said there was no point in Big Barrel closing early if people could just cross the road to buy alcohol at a dairy.

‘‘Otherwise, it’s not going to do anything. I’m looking at the bigger picture. People will just drive to the supermarket if we are not open and there will be more drunk drivers.’’

Submissions have closed on the city council’s draft local alcohol policy, which proposes bringing back closing time for off-licence premises from 11pm to 10pm.

The council will hold a hearing for people to speak further about the matter on October 16.

Foodstuffs’ response to earlier closing was that it favoured the national default hours of 7am to 11pm so customers choosing to do their grocery shopping in the evening could also buy something to drink.

The latest three of its four Liquorland outlets in Palmerston North currently close at 9pm, with only Pioneer Highway open until 10pm on Fridays and Saturdays.

Countdown’s alcohol responsibility manager Paul Radich said the supermarket chain supported the 10pm closing time.

‘‘Customers tell us that they prefer the convenience of us being able to retail beer and wine up until 10pm.’’