DURHAM, N.C. — The new year means new laws. In North Carolina, bars are preparing for possible big changes to their infrastructure to meet new health and food inspection requirements.

The state now requires any bar that serves or prepares food to be checked by the state health department for a permit. 

“I’m just taking down the Christmas decorations, you know, getting ready for January 2024," said Shannon Healy, owner of Alley Twenty Six in Durham.

Healy is preparing Alley Twenty Six for its 12th year. The craft cocktail bar opened in 2012 in downtown Durham.

“We're really, really excited about the opportunities for 2024. The further away we get from 2020 is better," said Healy.

We talked to Healy in 2022 when the bar was nominated as a semi-finalist for a James Beard Award.

Things are a little quieter right now, as the bar is in construction mode and making renovations to its kitchen bar.

“We just have increased lighting for this area of the room and were gonna put cabinets around," said Healy.

Alley Twenty Six will be open by Friday. Healy says the cocktail bar served small snacks during its first few years before adding a full kitchen in 2017.

“When we built the first side, we were being inspected by the Health Department, so we did all our stuff through the Health Department for the first side in 2012 and somewhere in 2013, 2014, they got rid of private membership clubs being inspected by the Health Department," said Healy.

In 2013, House Bill 74 eliminated the need for bars to be inspected by the State Health Department.

That came as a big surprise to Healy, who says food safety should always be a priority, even if he knows his business is doing the right things.

“I don't know why they did it, didn't seem to make sense to me or the health department, but they did," said Healy.

Fast forward to 2024 and Healy says the new law is causing headaches.

“We have to go back and redo paperwork that would have been easier on the front end," said Healy.

Effective Jan. 1, North Carolina law now requires bars like Alley Twenty Six to obtain a health department permit for food service. That will lead to many more inspections.

“Mostly what its gonna cost me and my staff is time like going back and finding all the plans that we've done in 2011, in 2016, in 2023, physical improvement we made to continue to do what we do. I have to find all those plans and send them to the health department, and they have to pretend like they're looking at them as a new build," said Healy.

Even though Healy says his bar is up to code and will probably not need to make major improvements to obtain that new permit, he worries the new law will significantly impact other similar North Carolina bars that not prepared for costly things, like plumbing for new kitchen sinks.

“It’s not really gonna cost me a lot of money but if my business wasn't set up for it, the plumbing wasn't in the right space, if you needed another hand sink and the plumbing wasn't there, you gotta dredge the floor, this is like a $10,000 hand sink if you're not set up for it to begin with. So yeah, it could really, really impact people's businesses in a painful way," said Healy.