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If a supermarket had a pub inside, would shopping get a bit more relaxing?

Lots of people have joked about it, and now in Northern Ireland it has actually come true.

This summer, the German discount supermarket Lidl opened its first in-store pub at a new branch in east Belfast.

The pub is named after the row of special-offer shelves in the middle of the store, where you can often find all kinds of surprising bargains.

On opening day, lots of locals came for a beer and posted videos online.

The pub uses the supermarket's signature red, yellow and blue, and the walls are lined with instant coffee and Lidl's own-brand tomato soup.

There's very little food, basically just the supermarket's own crisps, but many people come for the seats that look like shopping trolleys.

Some nights it gets so crowded that the supermarket had to hire a team of bouncers.

At closing time on the first night, a fight still broke out and the police had to come.

In fact, this pub is a way around the law.

In Northern Ireland, the rules on selling alcohol have been strict for more than a hundred years.

Even today, licences to sell alcohol are still tightly controlled.

To get a licence, you can only buy one from a shop that has closed or stopped selling alcohol.

You also have to prove that there aren't enough places selling alcohol nearby to meet local needs.

Lidl's Belfast store couldn't get a licence to sell wine, beer and spirits.

So it tried a different approach and applied for a pub licence, and customers can also buy alcohol at the back to take away.

It couldn't get a licence to sell alcohol, but it could get a pub licence, and that's why this pub exists.

This unusual workaround has reignited the debate over whether Northern Ireland should relax its alcohol laws.

One music producer says the strict law holds back Belfast's nightlife: there are too few places to perform, so many artists end up going to London.

But pub owners who already hold licences worry that if the law is relaxed, the licences they paid a fortune for will lose their value.

According to a government study, a licence can cost 120,000 pounds or even more.

Some people also worry that if too many new places open at once, many of them won't survive.

While the arguments go on, the supermarket pub keeps pouring beer and wine.

One woman said it's a good reason to go to the supermarket: if you forget the toilet paper, you can just come back and have another drink.

A German tourist even came specially to take pictures, and his favourite was a sign in the men's toilets: I only came in for bread.

Do you think a city's pubs and nightlife should be left to the market, or tightly regulated?