‘Dirty health food’ shop plans deliveries to Shoreditch bar patrons

Hackney’s bar patrons can look forward to late deliveries of “dirty health food” after a new addition to Shoreditch was granted its licence by the Town Hall.

The Good Yard, which also has branches in Leadenhall Market and Liverpool Street, navigated the borough’s controversial licencing restrictions to receive permission to serve alcohol at a 17 April licensing sub-committee hearing.

The debate over licensing in Hackney is set to continue after campaign group We Love Hackney succeeding in bringing the Town Hall’s contentious policy up for judicial review.

Good Yard owner George Zhuravlov said: “We’re looking to run a little bit later in Shoreditch than in Leadenhall Market, because we feel there is a bit more of a night-time economy and predominantly trying to catch people wanting a bite to eat at the end of the night.

“We’re happy to have [our licensing conditions] restricted at the beginning and prove that we are responsible operators, absolutely.

“We always strive to be conscientous neighbours annd fit into our community.  We want to be good neighbours by taking into account how people behave on the street, the amount of litter.

“The main issue we’ve had is that our experience so far has been in City of London, where it’s been far less of a concern, there’s no residents around, we don’t have as many regulations around the sale of alcohol in Leadenhall Market, so it’s understandable.”

Cllr Peter Snell (Lab, Dalston), who chaired the meeting, responded: “This is a more sensitive area, and unfortunately Shoreditch does get out of hand at times.”

The Good Yard’s Shoreditch branch, which is located opposite the popular Griffin pub on Leonard Street, will be carrying out food deliveries to the area’s drinkers of its food.

Cllr Snell said: “We get people coming to us applying for places where we know it’s a problem, people hanging out on the streets and eating meals and carrying on drinking.

“That’s exactly the sort of thing that gets alarm bells ringing, because in terms of public nuisance in the neighbourhood, do we really want people doing takeaway food at 11 o’clock at night. Generally, that would be a no-no.

“The slight danger we have with licensed premises is what happens if you fail in a year’s time and someone wants to use that licence for something completely different?”

The Good Yard will be able to serve alcohol from 9:30am to 10:30pm, with no off sales and the licence specific only to the business itself.

After 9pm, alcohol would only be able to be served with a substantial meal. Alcohol will stop being served on Sundays at 7:30pm.