With the Revised Smoking Ban, Businesses Struggle
By Arin Gencer
It's been a year since South Pasadena's Ten Pin Lanes had to start telling its smoking clients to go outside before they light up. Business hasn't been the same since.
"In the first month, we lost over $20,000," said Earle Gaudet, promotions manager at the bowling center on Pasadena Avenue, which also houses a restaurant and bar.
"We still have as many people bowling in our leagues," he added. But "instead of having a cocktail, food-they leave." And they're not going home, Gaudet added. They go where they can eat, drink and smoke without restriction, to local bars right down the street where smoking inside is not prohibited under Florida's newly amended Clean Indoor Air Act.
Amended in November 2002 and fully implemented last July, the law prohibits smoking in most indoor workplaces, including hotel lobbies, restaurants and bars that make more than 10 percent of their income from food sales. Exceptions to the rule include stand-alone bars-which derive their primary income from serving alcohol-stores that specialize in selling tobacco products, open-air restaurant patios and designated smoking rooms in hotels.
The law has hurt local restaurant and small-business owners, who say they have lost customers since the amendment went into effect one year ago last Thursday. Now they are working to regain those customers, trying to draw smokers and nonsmokers alike. And they express shock-and frustration-at the University of Florida study, released June 28, that claims business is good, if not better than before. That study, commissioned by antismoking coalition Smoke-Free for Health, said the smoking ban had not affected most Florida restaurants, hotels and bars.
"My question is, 'Who did they ask in the restaurant business?'" Gaudet said.
Ten Pin Lanes owner Bobbie Stealy said the center really took a hit when the summer season began in May. Losses were as high as 20 percent then, she said. And business at Twedt's, her bowling center in Largo, also started slipping. Stealy estimates that Twedt's has lost 10 to 15 percent of its income. Stealy says Ten Pin Lanes has lost more because it caters to a different clientele-a local bar crowd unlike the family oriented Twedt's. Smoking clients tend to spend more, buying more drinks and food, she said. When they can't smoke, they don't buy.
"Most smokers can go one to one-and-a-half hours without a cigarette," Stealy said. "Ask them to go three hours or more, and you're asking way too much."
Sandy Finkelstein, president of Bowling Centers Association of Florida (BCAF), said Stealy's situation reflects a general trend among bowling centers throughout the state. He said overall bar sales have gone down 25 percent.
Finkelstein said many people don't realize that the amendment applies to most indoor workplaces, not just restaurants. Those workplaces include bowling centers and pool halls, he said. Eliminating food service does not exempt them from the ban because bowling centers are not stand-alone bars-one of the few exceptions under the law, he added.
Florida Restaurant Association spokeswoman Lea Crusberg said the smoking ban's effect has varied among restaurants throughout the state, and size doesn't matter. Chains and small businesses alike have experienced losses-or emerged unscathed-she said.
But many businesses in South Pasadena and Gulfport are still trying to recover from their losses. Stealy and her restaurant counterparts say they know others are hurting, too.
Three miles from the South Pasadena bowling center, Tim and Helga Kane, owners of Gulfport's restaurant-bar H.T. Kane's, have had problems similar to Stealy's.
The Kanes said the restaurant lost about 25 percent in sales over the last year, most of the losses coming from the bar. Tim Kane says many of the regulars on which his business relies-and even some European tourists-have told him they won't come because they can't smoke inside.
"It's like a modern-day prohibition," he said. Helga Kane agreed. As a business owner, she said, she should be able to decide whether she wants to allow smoking inside. The Kanes say they've had to cut down their servers' shifts, something they never had to do before in the six years they've owned the restaurant.
Across the street at Casa Cortes, things are looking even worse. Owner José Cortes says business has dropped by 50 percent in the last year, and he blames the smoking ban.
"I used to make at least $1,000 a day," said Cortes, who has owned the restaurant-bar for 27 years. "Now it's come down to maybe $500." Casa Cortes has a small covered patio with a table for smokers in the back. But often it's too hot to sit there, Cortes said. Some customers order food to go. Others have a drink and leave. With two bars around the corner, people have little incentive to sit outside when they can smoke and drink inside-and sometimes enjoy free food-just a few doors down.
"They come here to eat," said Lisa Haught, a bartender at the restaurant. "But the minute they eat, they go there to drink." Cortes and Haught said this cuts into tips for servers and bartenders, who are making half the tip money they used to make.
Cortes' staff of 10 has gone down to five-three part-time and two full-time employees-because of layoffs or waitresses quitting because they aren't making enough money.
"All the people who voted, now that there's no smoking in here, where are they?" Haught asked. Or, as the Ten Pin Lanes' marquee put it during the slow winter season: "Nonsmokers where are you?"
Where Have All the Smokers Gone?
The problem, many smokers say, is that smoking and drinking tend to go hand in hand.
"If you can smoke, you're gonna hang out and drink more," said Rebecca Meyer, a smoker. "Even people who just socially smoke don't drink without smoking."
For Meyer and partner Kelly Garber, the ban has meant a change in dining habits. Meyer said if they go to a restaurant, they'll eat fast, go outside to smoke, and go back in for a drink. But it's not the same.
Garber, who has lived in Gulfport seven years, said she used to go to H.T. Kane's all the time. Now she and Meyer go next door to eat outside on Yabba Dew Beachside Grille's deck-even though Garber misses the "great environment" and "great food" at Kane's.
"I think it's especially bad for a restaurant like H.T. Kane's," Garber said. "It is catering to the people that want to go hang out." Even though it's a restaurant, it has a bar-like atmosphere, she said.
"They've gotta be hurting," she said.
Others simply have stopped going out as much. Judy Smith, a smoker, said she prefers having a drink before and after a meal at a nice restaurant. But she wants a cigarette with that drink, she said-and she can't have one. So instead of going out, Smith said she stays in more and spends less. Smoker Gwen Styers also said she'd sooner stay home than spend her money where she has been branded "illegal."
Some are not so easily deterred.
"If it's some place I really want to eat the food, it doesn't matter," said Karen Vale, a smoker and Gulfport resident. She and friends frequent Backfin Blue Café on Beach Boulevard for the corn chowder, she said. Instead of hanging around after the meal or going out to the back yard-where employees smoke-to light up, they leave.
"Now it doesn't become a question of where we want to go eat, but where do we want to go smoke," said Rob Buik, general managing partner of 2 Cando, which owns Yabba Dew. In the end, smokers will go wherever they can smoke.
The Big Beef: A Level Playing Field
Business owners' most common point of contention is not the Clean Indoor Air Act itself. Rather, it seems to be the law's uneven application. They say the law is unfair to those who actually comply with its requirements, depriving them of business and giving more to the stand-alone bars it does not affect.
"If no one complains, no one cares," he said. But this was not the intention of the smoke-free lobbies pushing for the law in the first place, he added.
Buik, who moved from California a year and a half ago, already had some experience with that state's smoking ban. But the difference between Florida's law and California's, Buik said, is that the latter set up a level playing field, banning smoking in any public place-not just places that receive more than 10 percent of their income from food sales, as in Florida.
"In Florida, they couldn't figure out what to do," he said, "so they compromised-and they compromised badly."
Cyndi Shain, co-owner of local Italian restaurant chain Gigi's, said she has no problem with the law. "However, let's get on an even playing field….We're penalized for serving food."
Shain and H.T. Kane's bartender Faun Weaver also question the logic behind the ban.
"It was to make a safer, healthier work environment for employees," Shain said, but does not cover bar employees.
"At what point did someone decide I'm worth more than a bartender at (local bar) O'Maddy's?" Weaver asked.
Warming Up to Nonsmokers-and Trying to Entice Smokers to Return
While business owners may question the law's fairness and reasoning, they have wasted no time trying to find ways to regain the business they have lost.
Finkelstein said that besides encouraging its members to bring in more nonsmokers, BCAF will continue pushing for an across-the-board application of the law to create the "fair playing field" some feel is nonexistent as things now stand.
Stealy said she plans to launch a major advertising campaign in August and hopes to attract more nonsmokers with "smoke-free facility" signs on the outside of the bowling center. And signs hanging from the ceiling inside the center announce the coming of a new deck, where people can eat and smoke-an effort to get her smoking clients back, she said.
Similar signs hang in the windows of H.T. Kane's, where the Kanes are building a beach pub next door to the restaurant-complete with bar, televisions, fans and misters to keep clients cool-to draw regulars back to their former haunt.
But not everyone has the option of building a space for smokers. For Shain, whose restaurant is located in a shopping strip, it's out of the question.
Shain said she increased her advertising budget by 50 percent to get Gigi's name "back out there," after taking an initially major hit when the ban was first enforced. She said the restaurant was down 16 percent in its income-the bottom line in the restaurant business. But as of July 1, things are finally evening out, she said.
"We have 80 percent new clientele," she said. The other 20 percent consists of the smokers that stayed and now go outside to smoke. "A year later we've recouped. Different clientele, but we recouped."
|
