‘Cocktail names too trendy’: Confusing council rules and ‘silent killer’ costs force CBD bar to close nine years early

Sunday, 7 June 2026

When Roger Iyer and his business partners moved from Auckland to Christchurch three years ago, they saw a gap in the market — affordable cocktails and food in a city where, he said, $22 for a drink was the norm.

At Eleven on Victoria St, most things on the menu were $11. It still is, right up until the bar closes its doors for the final time next Saturday.

The closure, announced this week, was put down to rising operating costs, council-imposed expenses and “circumstances beyond our control”. After talking with The Press, Iyer was more specific.

“We just wanted to give good things at the right prices,” he said. “Looks like Christchurch doesn’t want it. When I say Christchurch, I mean the people running the show — not the people who actually want it.”

Iyer acknowledged the broader pressures of rising fuel and supply costs had hit everyone. But the issue that ultimately pushed them over the edge, he said, was liquor licence restrictions.

When Eleven opened in 2023, its licence was granted for 11am to 1am Thursday to Saturday, and 11am to 11pm Sunday to Wednesday, after an original application for 1am seven days a week was scaled back.

Christchurch City Council later confirmed the premises at 61 Victoria St sat within 75m of a residential zone. Under district plan rules, operating past 11pm within that buffer zone requires a resource consent.

When Iyer discovered this during his licence renewal in 2024, he pushed to stay open until 1am, but was quoted between $18,000 and $25,000 to go through the resource consent process.

Iyer pointed to neighbouring bar Gunpowder, which was granted a special licence until 3am — something its owner confirmed to The Press, saying it was expensive to obtain but supported by the council due to the food-oriented nature of the venue.

“We’ve had no issues. No noise complaints, no police call-outs, nothing,” Iyer said. “We’d built the business around those hours. And then to be told we couldn’t keep them — and that it would cost us $25,000 just to try — that’s not fair.”

Faced with that cost and uncertainty, they agreed to reduce the hours to 11pm seven days a week. The new licence was approved in April 2025 but not issued until about eight months ago — meaning until then, Eleven continued trading under its original hours.

The tri-agency, a licensing body which includes the council, police and the medical officer of health, raised other concerns during the renewal process.

The medical officer of health initially opposed the application over the use of Afterpay at the premises, and recommended more appropriate language on the menu around the naming of shots, of which one was called “shooters”. The opposition was withdrawn in January 2025 after Eleven removed the Afterpay scheme.

Iyer said the cumulative pressure from the tri-agency left him feeling like the rules were being applied inconsistently and that no matter what he changed, there was always something else.

When he responded to the reduced hours by offering alcohol and food package deals, he said the council called him in again over concerns he was promoting alcohol irresponsibly. He said he was told his prices were too low and his cocktail names too trendy.

“We kept changing our menu to make it fit in the eyes of the council,” he said. “It’s like a dog chasing its tail. We’ve done everything within the legal framework. What's the problem? It’s so confusing.”

On top of the licensing battles, operating expenses — costs passed down from the landlord covering rates, common area maintenance and council charges — had more than doubled over three years, Iyer said.

“That’s the silent killer,” he said. “The rent never changes because we are in a contract, but the [operating expenses] is subject to market overview, and they keep changing it without informing us. There is no cap on it.”

When asked about the financial pressure these charges placed on hospitality businesses, council head of regulatory compliance Tracey Weston said any fees or regulations associated with alcohol licensing were set by central government legislation.

To keep Eleven afloat the past eight months, Iyer said he and his partners had borrowed about $500,000 from relatives in India to cover bills and operating costs.

“Finances can be recovered,” he said. “But something that you put your heart and soul into, and put passion into — that is something that cannot be recovered. That’s not respected, sadly, in this industry.”

The lease on the Victoria St premises runs until 2035, but the landlord agreed to let the team exit at the three-year mark. Iyer hopes to reopen Eleven somewhere outside the central city — but if nothing comes through, he may leave hospitality altogether.

“We came up with a good plan that had the potential to keep going for 10, 12 years,” he said. “But these external factors — licensing hours, rules that keep changing — start to kill the business slowly in the background.

“And someone sitting in a council office on a cushion, with no experience of how things work on the ground, makes these rules. And we have to suffer.”