House on Hood in Hamilton. Photo: Google Maps
A popular Hamilton bar has banned patrons under the age of 20 on Saturday nights following thousands of dollars of damage.
House on Hood had lowered the entry age to 18 last year, but decided to reverse the decision saying the bad behaviour of some teens is also costing them older customers.
Another pub owned by the Lawrenson Group has a minimum cover age of 25.
The group's chief executive John Lawrenson told Checkpoint they were left with no option but to raise the entry age.
"There just seems to be a love affair with breaking toilets when you're young and going out to drink. I own Outback bar at Hamilton as well, and it's mainly aimed at first year students. We've had four toilets broken in there in the last two weeks."
He said the behaviour started at his bar House on Hood when they dropped the drinking age to 18.
"You can imagine that my older customers do not appreciate going to the toilet to find the bowls broken and it's out of order."
When House on Hood was a 20-plus bar, Lawrenson said, they did not face these types of issues.
"It was a bar that you'd come through at the end of the night and check on, everything would be in pretty good condition.
"Then when you let the 18-year-olds in, the repair and maintenance bill went through the roof."
Lawrenson said the damage has cost around a five-figure amount.
"It unfortunately usually only amounts of a few hundred at a time, so you might be paying for a plumber to come back in and put in a new toilet bowl, and that might be seven or 800 dollars, but it's never enough to claim insurance, because it would never meet the excess.
"You're always out of pocket every couple of weeks fixing a toilet, getting the bills done to redo the bannisters, getting some furniture replaced and it's just been death by 1000 cuts."
The difference between 18-year-olds drinking and 20-year-olds is life experience, Lawrenson said.
"I think most people would agree at that age or 38 and 40 or 48 and 50, there's not really a lot of difference. But when you're an 18-year-old going into a bar for the first time, you literally have no experience.
"That first six to 12 months, they really don't know where their limits are if someone's going to get drunk to the point of throwing up or drunk to the point of acting way outside the behavioural norms."
He said there have been issues with people preloading.
"They'll go to a bottle store first, they'll buy RTD's or liquor, they'll drink a lot of it quickly and come to town still not looking that affected by the alcohol.
"The plan is you drink it as soon as close to coming to town as you possibly can, knowing that it will hit you through the night, so unfortunately we just end up dealing with the aftermath of preloading and binge drinking."
The venues that allow 18-year-olds are more designed to be night clubs, he said.
"They don't have a dining function through the week.
"Teens are coming into your night clubs and maybe they do a bit of damage, it's not going to affect the ambience for people that have been trying to come and for a meal on a Tuesday night."
Bars like Keystone, which has a 25-plus age limit, is designed more for people who want to sit down for a meal.
"People want to go there for a meal on a Sunday maybe, they want to have brunch. They don't want to be coming into a venue where the toilets are out of order because someone smashed them the night before."
Bars aimed at 18-year-olds are built to be more robust, Lawrenson said.
"We literally do have stainless steel toilet bowls on the boy's toilets at the Outback, but funnily enough, even the girls' toilets are now starting to get quite a bit of damage. So, we're actually having to look at the girls' toilets at the Outback too."
Lawrenson said he has received positive feedback about the ban.
"I really thought that the 18-year-olds would be quite upset about it and would get a lot of push back, but they've been pretty quiet.
"The outpouring of positivity from the 20-plus crowd and the amount of attention this has got nationally has been overwhelming. So, I think a good decision for us, a good decision for our customers and I'm very positive about what the outcome will be from it."
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