Editor’s Note: This column is informed by recent reporting from Brad Kutner at Radio IQ and WVTF on proposed changes to Virginia’s food-to-alcohol sales ratio, as well as conversations with people connected to the restaurant and hospitality industry.
Virginia’s liquor laws are outdated. That’s a starting point.
For years, restaurants serving mixed beverages in this state have been required to make nearly half their revenue from food. Forty-five percent. A hard number, enforced annually, with consequences if you miss it. Beer and wine sales, notably, don’t count toward that total.
Now lawmakers are seriously considering lowering that threshold to 30 percent, and for once, this doesn’t feel like another doomed Richmond exercise in talking past itself. This one might actually happen.
Part of that has less to do with sudden enlightenment and more to do with who has quietly stopped standing in the way.
In the past, the restaurant industry itself was split. Some operators liked the rule. It kept pure bars at bay, protected food-forward concepts, and maintained a certain cultural baseline. Others saw it as an outdated constraint that punished modern business models. That internal divide made it easy for lawmakers to punt year after year.
That’s changed.
According to sources familiar with the discussions, the Virginia Restaurant, Lodging & Travel Association, long neutral on the issue, has shifted to supporting a change in the ratio. When the trade group that represents the industry stops hedging, legislators notice. Neutral becomes momentum. Suddenly 70/30 doesn’t sound radical. It sounds inevitable.
There’s also been a generational clearing of the legislative chessboard. In 2024, Orange County Republican Senator Bryce Reeves pushed a similar effort that got further than anyone expected, helped along by the retirement of some senior Democrats who had reliably opposed any loosening of alcohol rules. Former Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw was one of them.
Fairfax Delegate David Bulova shelved the effort two years ago. He’s now headed into the Governor’s administration. When asked recently by Radio IQ, whether he wanted the ratio maintained, he laughed and said it was out of his hands. Which is legislator-speak for “this train has left the station.”
Reeves, for his part, isn’t fighting the shift. He’s welcoming it.
The food-to-alcohol ratio is especially strange because it doesn’t actually measure responsibility. It measures accounting. You can sell excellent food and still fail the test. You can sell terrible food and pass. The rule didn’t ensure quality, it ensured compliance. It encouraged bloated menus, forced concepts, and dishes that existed solely to keep the ABC satisfied.
And yet, here’s the uncomfortable truth. That same ridiculous rule helped push Richmond’s food scene to where it is today.
You couldn’t survive as a pure bar. You had to cook. You had to offer plates people would actually buy. Over time, that pressure raised expectations. It’s part of why Richmond punches above its weight when it comes to food. You can draw a straight line from state regulation to a city full of kitchens that take themselves seriously.
Hovering in the background is another quiet reality. Alcohol isn’t having the cultural moment it once did. Younger people drink less, go out differently, and are far more comfortable skipping booze altogether. The industry knows it. When demand softens, the rules around selling alcohol start to feel heavier, even if those rules were always a little absurd.
So no, the rule wasn’t smart. But it accidentally did something good, which is very on brand for Virginia.
Dropping the requirement to 30 percent feels like a compromise that understands both sides of the argument. It gives restaurants room to breathe without blowing the doors off entirely. It acknowledges that dining culture has changed, that cocktails are part of the experience, and that a smaller menu doesn’t mean a worse one.
What it doesn’t do is turn Richmond into a city of bars pretending to be restaurants. That fear gets dragged out every time this conversation comes up, and it never quite matches reality. Licenses still exist. Zoning still exists. Oversight still exists. The only thing changing is how tightly the state insists on counting your appetizers.
Virginia loves control. Always has. It regulates alcohol the way it regulates everything else, cautiously, suspiciously, and about a few decades behind the culture. But every now and then, it loosens its grip just enough to admit the world has moved on.
If this passes, it won’t be because anyone suddenly got brave. It’ll be because the resistance finally got tired.
Main photo: Patrick Henry Pub in Church Hill
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