Locavore gets licence to sell alcohol at Garnethill cafe

Bosses at Locavore plan to sell organic wines and beers from the Renfrew Street venue.

Glasgow’s Licensing Board agreed to award a premises licence to the community interest company when it met on Friday.

A nearby resident raised concerns over a proposed closing time of 1am, but Archie MacIver, representing Locavore, offered to change the time to 11pm.

The neighbour had said: “At night time, the noise amplifies very much. Perhaps when you’re down on the ground, you don’t realise how much the noise travels up.

“My concern was it would be shutting up about 1am in the morning, there would be people coming and going, a bit of chatter, which would be loud.”

Mr MacIver said the objection was “perfectly reasonable” but the company director had no plans to open until 1am.

“The premises currently shut at about 6pm in the evening and he doesn’t see that changing much.

“The only way he does see it potentially going that little bit later into the evening is if there were an event occurring.

“By event, we’re not talking about rock bands playing here or anything like that. Any live entertainment would be more in the nature of perhaps an acoustic guitarist. More likely to be something like poetry readings.”

Mr MacIver said Locavore is “rapidly becoming known and loved by the citizens of Glasgow as being a very socially aware operation”.

“It’s a community company, as you’ll be aware the whole purpose is a business with primarily social objectives,” he told the board.

“The surpluses from the operation of the business are reinvested for these social objectives, either back into the business or into the community.”

The neighbour welcomed the offer to change the closing time of the cafe, which has capacity for 36 people.

She said: “I do go down and shop in Locavore, I do like their stuff. I’ve got nothing against the company, I was quite excited when I heard Locavore was coming to the building.

“When I was just reading about the late licence, we could be subjected to noise coming up.”

Locavore took over the Renfrew Street premises from The Project Cafe. It also has shops in Govanhill and Partick.

As well as organic, zero-waste supermarkets, the social enterprise, which exists to build sustainable local food systems, has developed a market garden and a veg box scheme.