We had discussion like this a long time ago and one member piped up that they serve beer at their PTO meeting. (I think it was a brewery town.) Definitely caused a little flurry in the discussion as I recall.
Maybe I should look back through the Forum archives.
In Michigan I know I worked for a non-profit group that at one time met in a local restaurant for their meetings.
There was a big issue about having an Open Meeting (to the public) in an establishment that was expecting people to make purchases.
Not to mention, unless they have a large enough table seating area, how would you run a meeting?
I know of a couple of local groups which use eateries which have small meeting rooms available. They usually are groups that don't have a local physical building in common to use.
I agree. We try to keep anything social out of our meetings, even though we are all friends. I think this is a bad idea for sooo many reasons. (Not that I don't like a good bar every now & again.) Mainly, it just seems like it would be hard to get any work done & to take anything even a little be seriously.