«These businesses represent a very clear unfair competition and in recent years have been increasing. The surprising thing is that the Madrid City Council does nothing. Who is so blunt against businesses with tasting bar licenses, mainly patisseries, which are acting as bars without being Juan Juan Blardony, president of the Madrid Hospitality Association (formerly La Viña Association).
According to this group, the City Council has granted a total of 350 tasting bar licenses since 2014, mainly in the Centro district, where 126 are accumulated, followed by Salamanca (38) and Chamberí (39).
These licenses allow, according to the collective, to circumvent the norm of the City Council of not granting new licenses of hospitality in the zones of acoustic protection (ZPAE), obtaining permissions to work like “false bars”.
«Since 2012 there were limitations by distance to give new hospitality licenses in the ASPAs, but since the reform of the regulations in May 2019, no more licenses are given, so the business opening with tasting bar proliferates» , says the president of Hospitality Madrid.
"These shops offer in their establishments a food and beverage service, including alcoholic beverages", they denounce from the group. These businesses also have notable advantages over those of the hospitality industry. For starters, its opening hours can be 24 hours, when the hospitality has a specific schedule depending on the activity.
The second is that these premises are not required to have toilets for the public, as is the case with the hospitality industry; and, finally, they have "more lax" conditions in the field of soundproofing and sanitary conditions.
«The proliferation of these businesses has been increasing in recent years. While they can open freely in the ASPAs, new hospitality businesses cannot be set up or expand or reform existing ones, ”they criticize from Madrid Hospitality.
In the association they do not understand that these establishments continue to operate with these terms, especially taking into account the resolution regarding the General Directorate of Security of the Community of Madrid of September 12, 2018, which states that the aforementioned bar activity tasting «it is understood that it participates of the same nature as that granted in the types of establishment bar, cafeteria, restaurant bar or similar, having to submit, the establishments that offer such services, to obtain the appropriate municipal operating license, or to the formalization of responsible declaration, referred to in the precepts integrated in article 8 and the Ninth Additional Provision of Law 17/1997 ».
From the City Council remember that shops with a tasting bar "have a place in the legal system, although it is true that its regulation must be improved in order to guarantee neighborhood coexistence, new environmental requirements and free competition" with the hospitality industry.
Therefore, from the Consistory they assure that they are processing the new regulations regarding licenses to «regulate, harmonize and make sense of commerce and hospitality». From the Consistory they urge the association to report specific cases to the City Council, which will verify whether the regulations are complied with.
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