The study, released Tuesday, measured alcohol sales by wholesale distributors to Lexington hotels, bars and restaurants. Richard Thalheimer, who performed the study, said those sales dropped 9.8 percent to 13.3 percent since the ban took effect in April 2004.

Source: WKYT.com. Link Expired

A university fixture for more than a decade, Calamity Cafe, closed its doors, much to the dismay of its loyal following. The restaurant cited the smoking ban as hurting business and a reason to close.

Source: Marshall Parthenon. Link

In one week, the alcohol sales at Katz has dropped 20 percent, and their overall sales 13%. At P.O.E.T.S., the owner says they’re down from 20 percent to 33 percent on any given day and at the Q Pub, where they stopped selling food to allow their customers to smoke, sales are down 36 percent.

Kessler and the other owners are asking for a Federal injunction to stop the ban, fearing the losses will continue as they have in other smoke-free cities according to at least some recent studies.

“They show that Dallas lost 11.8 million the first year that it was in effect in Dallas,” said attorney James Skrobarcek.

Source: kirstv.com. Link

Two Reynolds Road diners opened by well-known chef Maximilian Korl in the late 1990s closed last week after the latest owners were unable to meet payroll for 50 employees Saturday, one of the owners said.

Business at the Max’s Diner restaurants dropped 20 to 25 percent after Toledo’s smoking ban went into effect, eating away profits, said Jeff Kaminsky, who has owned the restaurants with his wife, Kathy, for five years.

Source: Toledo Blade. Link

Naylon won at the trial-court level and won again at the Appellate Division. It was a David and Goliath battle, and David won. Unfortunately, “David” was so financially devastated by the battle that he had to discontinue the fight.

“David” beat back the onerous policy of the county commissioner only to ultimately give up in frustration. Now, he and 25 other people are out of work.

Link

{If banning smoking was good for business, which the nicotine nannies claim, free market forces would result in lots of smoke free bars. But when bar owners try to go smoke free on their own it usually kills their business, proving the nannies contention is a lie.}

Owner Pat Carragher, from the Lobby Bar in Victoria Street, originally made the move to ban cigarettes in September in support of the city’s campaign to become smoke free.

But since the venue opened on the former site of the Expresso Exchange, Mr. Carragher, uncle to Liverpool FC centre-half Jamie, has done a complete U-turn on his policy.

Mr Carragher said: “It’s felt like I’ve been committing commercial suicide.”

He added: “One particular problem is that, if a group of six people come in and one person in the party smokes, the whole group want to leave because that one person is prohibited from lighting up.”

He has finally decided that enough was enough after frequent occurrences of groups leaving when a small number wanted to smoke, and he has now decided to open the bar without restrictions. Mr Carragher added: “Until the council’s measure is in force as a widespread policy, I cannot champion this very worthy cause alone. It’s just not financially viable.”

Source: liverpool.co.uk Link

Two dozen tables sit unused in a darkened dining room of Pedro’s Mexican Restaurant on Madison’s north side.

Pedro’s owner, Jim Martine, a Neenah native who learned the restaurant trade from his parents when they owned Martine’s restaurant in Appleton, recalls weekends when 200 customers from nearby shopping centers would crowd the dining room, reserved for smokers.

However, he said since Madison passed an ordinance banning smoking in restaurant dining rooms in 2002, those customers have gone elsewhere, along with the jobs needed to serve those customers.

Source: WISinfo.com. Link Expired

Many cafe owners and managers said they enforced the ban initially. But that lasted just a few months, as customers got upset or didn’t come at all, reducing between 20 and 35 percent of total revenue, they said.

Source: Zwire. Link Expired.

The owners, coffee and tea suppliers, blame running costs, the “coffee to go” culture and the public smoking ban.

They say the two cafes are no longer profitable.

The Westmoreland Street shop has been in business since 1896, while the Grafton Street premises, with three floors decorated with stained-glass windows, opened in 1927.

A Bewley’s spokeswoman said Ireland’s public smoking ban had also contributed, especially as a request for outside seating was rejected.

“People who used to come in for a coffee and a cigarette don’t do that now,” she told BBC News Online.

Link

The owners of Bewley’s Oriental Cafes, Ireland’s famous tea and coffee shops have announced that two of their landmark Dublin cafes are to close.

The owners, coffee and tea suppliers, blame running costs, the “coffee to go” culture and the public smoking ban.

The Westmoreland Street shop has been in business since 1896, while the Grafton Street premises, with three floors decorated with stained-glass windows, opened in 1927.

He described the decision to close as “a very emotional event, like a death in the family - it’s like a part of Dublin dying.”

A Bewley’s spokeswoman said Ireland’s public smoking ban had also contributed, especially as a request for outside seating was rejected.
“People who used to come in for a coffee and a cigarette don’t do that now,” she told BBC News Online.

Source: BBC News. Link

My business is down 30 percent, I have had to restructure the working hours of my employees. I no longer need them to work as many hours, and never have to double up and have two bartenders a shift. We don’t get enough customers.

I will be lucky if I break even this year.

Source: The Day. Link Expired

My business is down 30 percent, I have had to restructure the working hours of my employees. I no longer need them to work as many hours, and never have to double up and have two bartenders a shift. We don’t get enough customers.

I will be lucky if I break even this year.

Source: theday.com. Link Expired.

Winnipeg - “The supposed groundswell of non-smokers that were going to come out of the woodwork to fill that gap haven’t,” said Doug Stephen, president of WOW Hospitality, which operates several restaurants in Winnipeg, including The Old Spaghetti Factory and Pasta la Vista.

…The province estimates its gambling profits will plunge more than $27 million this year and continue to tumble the following year, thanks to smoking bans. That’s a loss of about 10%.

VLT revenues have been down about 20% in Winnipeg and Brandon.

Source: Winnipeg Sun. Link Expired.

“If I had known I was going to lose my business I wouldn’t have bought this home.”

The elder Iamunno claims that the restaurant had done well for the first three years. But when the statewide smoking ban snuffed out cigarettes in his bar area last October, 80 percent of his business went up in smoke, he said.

Source: The Record Journal Link Expired.

To illustrate his feeling that the government has overstepped its bounds and decimated New York nightlife, he recounted a conversation he had had with a woman who supports the ban gleefully, who quipped obliviously that “my hair doesn’t stink, my clothes don’t stink, and there’s so much room at the bar.”

Despite what naobobs like Dr. Gemson and Assemblywoman Glick seem to think, the smoking ban has done far more to harm small business than it has to prevent smoking. An entire underground economy has sprung up around the ban to provide places for smokers. Knights of Columbus halls and private smoking dens are common, and bars spill crowds of smokers into the streets. Since the ban has been enacted noise complaints have skyrocketed, providing headaches to precinct captains citywide and proving a serious detriment to residents’ quality of life. Rarely noticed, bar owners in lower Manhattan still suffering from 9-11’s aftershocks are now victimized by thoughtless laws.

I spoke to Sandee Wright, owner of Whiskey Ward on Essex Street and a fierce opponent of the ban, put in place, ostensibly, to protect employees from the dangers of second hand smoke. Standing 5’3” with pink highlighted hair and a black skull and bones tank top, Sandee hardly fits the role of Dickensian wage master. When asked about the issue of employees’ health she retorted that “it’s not all that healthy when bartenders can’t afford their rent.” So far falling profits have led her to let go of two employees and cut back shifts. Often times her husband Max works the door to eliminate costs. When unemployment hits “health insurance is the first thing to go,” she said.

Whiskey Ward has seen profits drop by at least 20% since the ban hit. Manhattan Beer Distributors concurs. Stagnant sales have led to a 7% drop in beer demand citywide, and a 19% drop citywide to clubs.

Source: New Partisan. Link

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Fayetteville’s smoking ban has been in place for several months, and some restaurant owners said Tuesday that they are shutting down because of it.

Casa Taco is one restaurant that recently closed its doors. The owner told 40/29’s Melissa Kelly that the smoking ban snuffed out his sales.

“Sales dropped off dramatically,” said Alex Hunt. “We lost our late-night business … a lot of people come in after the bars close.”

Along with Hunt, the owners of the Ozark Brewing Co. and Café Santa Fe said the smoking ban was a factor in their decisions to close.

On Dickson Street, some restaurant owners say their late-night business is down by as much as 25 percent.

Source: 4029tv.com.  Link

“It has almost put me out of business. We are down about 45 percent for each month,” Zook said. “Our food sales were 48 percent of our business. Now they are down to 10 percent. A lot of people who had drinks with lunch or dinner are not coming in now.“

Source: Palm Beach Post. Link Expired

Maryland - Since the ban was implemented October 2003 by the Montgomery County Council, Scaggs said Anchor Inn suffered a 40 percent loss in Keno, beer, wine, liquor and food sales.

Prior to the ban, Scaggs had installed a $350,000 ventilation system in the restaurant with air exchangers that took in smoke and replaced it with fresh air.

Source Gazette.net. Link Expired.

DALLAS - Monday will mark the first anniversary of Dallas’ smoking ban and across the city some restaurant managers have said they have lost business while some even blame the ban for their closing.

Members of the restaurant association said their alcohol sales have dropped since the ban by 20 Percent to 25 percent.Link

DALLAS — Monday will mark the first anniversary of Dallas’ smoking ban and across the city some restaurant managers have said they have lost business while some even blame the ban for their closing.

Members of the restaurant association said their alcohol sales have dropped since the ban by 20 percent to 25 percent.

Link

Nine months later, the impact is hardly so clear cut. An examination of government data, public polls, private surveys and interviews with customers, employees and owners of more than three dozen bars and restaurants around the city shows the law having an impact on some businesses, but certainly not on all.

Many bar owners and managers say the smoking ban has hurt business, eroding profits and, in some cases, forcing them to cut back hours or lay off workers. Others say they have seen virtually no effect.

Happy-hour sales on Friday nights at the Whiskey Ward on the Lower East Side have dropped to barely $100, from $600, a co-owner says, and regulars have disappeared along with the ashtrays.

A co-owner of Patroon, a steakhouse in Midtown, says he no longer sees much of a cigar-puffing, after-dinner crowd. And in the meatpacking district, the owner of Hogs & Heifers, where Julia Roberts was once enticed to dance on the bar, says she is considering laying off four employees.

”It’s harder to keep track of everybody going in and out,” said Chuck Zeilfelder, a bartender at Bourbon Street in Bayside, Queens, who opposes the ban. ”It’s common for people to leave money on the bar, and that becomes an issue — how much they left. Also, people leave their drinks on the bar and go out. The drinks get thrown out, and then you have to buy them another round on the house.”

The city chapters of the New York State Restaurant Association mailed out a survey to more than 900 members and found that 88 of the 115 city businesses that responded said they had a decline in bar sales since the smoking ban, and 58 said they had a decline in food sales. In addition, 76 reported that their employees had an unfavorable reaction to the ban, while 18 reported a favorable reaction.

Similarly, an October study commissioned by the Vintners Federation of Ireland interviewed 300 bars and nightclubs in the New York region and found that 66 percent reported fewer customers since the smoking ban, while 15 percent reported more. In all, 78 percent said the impact of the ban on their businesses had been negative.

Sales representatives for wine and liquor companies say the impact has trickled down to them. They say business has dropped between 20 percent and 40 percent since the smoking ban. Similarly, an association for operators of jukeboxes, pinball machines and other games says that revenues have fallen between 10 and 25 percent at bars and nightclubs in New York City.

Owners and employees reported selling fewer drinks and losing customers before dessert. They complained of the need to watch over drinks and money left on the bar and seats left unoccupied by patrons heading out for a smoke. And bartenders said that tips were down, as were overall tabs, and that longtime customers were resorting to alternatives — hotel rooms, private homes and parks — to indulge their smoking and drinking.

Amy Sacco, owner of Lot 61 and Bungalow 8 in West Chelsea, said she had to hire an extra security guard just to make sure the smoking crowd outside does not become unruly. ”It makes the job very unhappy,” Ms. Sacco said. ”Next thing you know, it’s prohibition for cocktails. We’re all responsible for policing it. It’s such a drag.”

Source: New York Times. Link

A page that documents dozens of closings, as well as incidents of smoker harassment. This is a very old page and unfortunately, most of the links have expired.

Link

Tony Almeida, co-owner of Eightball VIP Sports Cafe in Chatham, said the bylaw has had a “drastic impact.

“I would say sales have been impacted to the tune of 40 per cent or more,” he said.

Source: Chatham Daily News. Link Expired