Wednesday, August 17, 2022

Encore Casino: the Mass. Gaming Commission has fined the nightclub operator $25,000 and the Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission is upping its presence there.

 After five separate incidents in which patrons at Encore Boston Harbor’s Memoire nightclub, some of them underage, were served more alcohol than they should have been, the Mass. Gaming Commission has fined the nightclub operator $25,000 and the Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission is upping its presence there.

The fine and required corrective actions, which Big Night Entertainment Group agreed to and worked with the commission to develop, are meant to clamp down on things like excessive service of shots in a short period of time and bottle service no-nos like patrons drinking straight from a bottle or having alcohol poured directly into their mouths, regulators said.

“The fine was assessed following alcohol over-service incidents on five separate occasions between October of 2021 and this past June of 2022. One of the incidents involved over-service at the bar in Memoire, and four of the five incidents involved over-service during bottle service and the over-service was as a result of improper administration of bottle service during those times,” Heather Hall, the Gaming Commission’s chief enforcement counsel, said during a meeting last week.

In addition to the $25,000 fine, the Gaming Commission’s Investigations and Enforcement Bureau is requiring that Memoire conduct more staff training and change its policies around both bottle service (when patrons reserve a table at the nightclub with a server dedicated to pouring them drinks) and also alcohol service generally. The changes specify that a server must take all bottles of alcohol with them whenever they leave a bottle service area, that patrons are prohibited from pouring their own drinks and that no patron is ever allowed to drink directly from a bottle, Hall said.

https://www.bostonherald.com/2022/08/16/encore-boston-nightclub-25000-fine-showcases-state-regulatory-muscle/

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