SALEM -- New advertising regulations for Oregon bars and restaurants now allow establishments to legally advertise their “happy hours.”
The Oregon Liquor Commission regulates how businesses can advertise their drink menus. Historically that has meant little or no advertising at all.
But now, the commission has made a change relaxing those rules.
Davis Street Tavern owner Blake Smith said he knows this will help business.
“We usually fill our whole restaurant at that time, and hopefully, we fill it afterwards, too," he said.
Smith said he’s always been conscious of the rules that guard his happy hour advertising. As a result, he hasn’t done much in that regard, but that could now change.
“It will give us more of a piece of mind to legally advertise something. Instead of kind of doing it just on a website or just outside - now we can legally do something,” he explained.
Chris Joseph, owner of the Morrison Hotel, was also excited about the opportunity to target more potential customers.
“Anything to increase your chances of making more money is going to help you and I think making that change is good and it's about time. A lot of people have been doing it anyway,” he said.
Under the new OLCC policies, Joseph can now tell customers when his happy hour will occur and how deep the discounts will be. The only catch was that he can not put the two together in the same ad. This particular rule was important to Pete Schulberg of the Oregon Partnership.
"If we're going to loosen these rules, we have to be very careful that it just doesn't allow the barn doors to open and have these price wars breaking out," Schulberg said.
Both Smith and Joseph said they don’t feel the ad change will dramatically increase business but it might help a little, and would at least give them some options to help draw in more customers.
