According to Kynn Tribble, who can be heard leading the Town Hall in the video above, Tribble’s Bar and Grill in the Piedmont started SC Venue Crisis in response to rising costs. His liquor liability went from $5,000 to $60,000 in three years. Tribble owns Tribble’s Bar and Grill.
While the Grand Strand is home to a vibrant food and beverage industry, more bars and concert venues are likely to close in the coming months.
Especially this year, owning a bar in South Carolina isn’t all fun and games.
MyrtleBeachSC News reported recently that tourism during the July 4th Holiday will be down 20% per Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce forecasts.
A group of Grand Strand bar owners and beverage servers met at Ricky’s Dockside in Little River to discuss skyrocketing insurance premiums that are closing bars throughout the state.
Ricky, owner of Ricky’s Dockside can be heard on the video above stating his own insurance premiums have reached an unaffordable level for a small bar operation.
What is worse, these owners have no margins for raising their rates.
According to Jeremy Barnes, owner of Pinky’s Revenge Bar and Arcade, located in the Upstate, “If they raise the rates, there will be no profit margin for anyone. You won’t be able to pay your employees, you won’t be able to maintain your equipment. I would have to charge [my customers] twice [what I am charging now].”
Pinky’s Revenge owner Barnes has owned his bar for two years. When he opened, his liquor liability insurance cost $8,800. This year, it will cost him at least $31,000, and he’s not alone.
Barnes stated that “too many places are closing because of it.”
A law written by Horry County SC Senator Luke Rankin in 2017 required liquor license holders to buy at least a million dollars of insurance annually. This legislation was in response to an incident where a drunk driver left a bar without insurance, which also lacked insurance, and hit a Dillon police officer, who was brutally injured.
In those instances, lawmakers thought the law would cover them. However, it drove up prices and drove bars like Barnes’ out of business. It also caused insurance carriers to charge more for claims with only two insurance providers now carrying the liability insurance for bar operators.
According to Russ Dubisky, Executive Director of the South Carolina Insurance Association, “Insurers are paying out two dollars for every dollar they collect from liquor liability.“
In the past four years, countless insurance agencies have left the state.
According to Dubisky, premiums are rising because losses in the industry and claims are being paid out, as well as a lack of competition in the space, which keeps rates low.
Who are the big winners? The S.C. Trial Lawyers that helped put Rankin in his current seat as S.C. Judiciary Chairman. Those monies were funneled in by the S.C. Trial Lawyers for Rankin when Alex Murdaugh was the S.C. Trial Lawyers’ President. Alex Murdaugh, from Hampton, South Carolina, would later murder his wife and son, becoming a national tabloid news figure.
HOW RANKIN BECAME JUDICIARY CHAIRMAN
According to Kynn Tribble, who can be heard leading the meeting in the video above, Tribble’s Bar and Grill in the Piedmont started SC Venue Crisis in response to rising costs. His liquor liability went from $5,000 to $60,000 in three years. Kynn Tribble owns Tribble’s Bar and Grill.
“Would I look like this if I had that kind of money?” asks Tribble.
His bar and others like it may be doomed as rates continue to rise.
Karen Riordan of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce was personally invited to attend the meeting by Tribble’s SC Venues Crisis team. No one from the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber showed.
The Grand Strand Business Alliance is a PAC fostered by the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce. The PAC has helped fund Senator Rankin’s campaign for more than the past 20 years.