1017199 Gourmet Burger Kitchen (South William Street)

There is a trend recently of high-end restaurants getting pub licences, so as to make it easier and more legally safe to do things such as offering cocktails to customers who are waiting, or beers to those that have finished dining - there are time limits and other restrictions on use of the Wine On Licence with its beer exception, or the Special Restaurant Licence.

This is, as far as I can tell, the first case of it being used for a burger bar. 

GBK are at the higher end of burger bars, of course; and in this case they have actually fitted (a limited number of) taps to make the premises start to resemble a pub a little bit. But I'm fairly sure they still want you to buy a burger to drink here. As you often have to wait outside for a free table, its not like they really have capacity to spare - but on a very sunny day, there was actually a fair bit of space inside and only a wait for the outside tables.

I suspect there may be longer term plans to convert this to a pub, and the licence acquired for those plans has just been applied to make some money in the interim - I really can't see that they were likely to breach the rules on serving beer on a wine licence, or that the spirits that they have at the micro-bar are going to be in huge demand. But its there, it has a conventional pub licence, so it needed to be ticked off. Burger was acceptable, pint was poor.