As an example of the economics for regular bars (NOT clubs) of smoking bans: place I used to work at saw a 80% drop in ring outs following the smoking ban in Arizona. After 6 months that improved to only a 60-70% drop in ring outs. After 1 year of the smoking ban, things had 'improved' to only a 25-50% drop since pre-ban, which is where it stayed for the next couple years until I left there. I did the accounting logging at the end of every night for all shifts and was able to dig out old ledgers and compare.
I should explain those numbers. That's comparing apples-to-apples, i.e. first friday of the month vs first friday of the month, St Patrick's day one year to the next, etc. The nights biggest hit were the 'off nights' like sun/mon/tue, which saw a 75%+ drop even after 6 months and generally stayed like that. Prime nights thu/fri/sat were the least effected, but still saw huge declines.
The reason business 'improves' after 6 months or a year is that the drop in sales causes lots of bars to close, and you generally pick up a few regulars from every one of your local competitors that close. About the bars that close: generally the ones with the best chance to stay alive are the places who own their own building. Anyone with a landlord who doesn't want to hear about sales declines when rent is due is in a lot of trouble. We saw 6 bars close within a couple miles of our location within a year of the ban first hitting. Now 2 or 3 years later I think only two of those places reopened with new owners.
Restaurants are largely unaffected by smoking bans, as everyone already knew would be the case. However, to bars the bans are a blight on an industry already plagued with more draconian dui laws and lawsuits. After bans pass you will see lots of glowing articles about how "the hospitality industry is unaffected!" but then read the fine print and every single one of them lumps restaurants in with bars, skewing the statistics. They won't put the numbers out for just bars because they know they are horrendous.
And this is to say nothing of the loss of tax revenue. Bars and liquor are heavily taxed, and especially today in poor economic times, with our state selling off public buildings to try to meet the budget, the LAST thing we should be doing is discouraging tax paying businesses with stupid, intrusive, 'do gooder' laws like these.
I know this is a long post, and I am sorry for that, but I think people outside our industry just really don't have any idea of how bad things really are with these bans and maybe a first hand perspective might help.
I should explain those numbers. That's comparing apples-to-apples, i.e. first friday of the month vs first friday of the month, St Patrick's day one year to the next, etc. The nights biggest hit were the 'off nights' like sun/mon/tue, which saw a 75%+ drop even after 6 months and generally stayed like that. Prime nights thu/fri/sat were the least effected, but still saw huge declines.
The reason business 'improves' after 6 months or a year is that the drop in sales causes lots of bars to close, and you generally pick up a few regulars from every one of your local competitors that close. About the bars that close: generally the ones with the best chance to stay alive are the places who own their own building. Anyone with a landlord who doesn't want to hear about sales declines when rent is due is in a lot of trouble. We saw 6 bars close within a couple miles of our location within a year of the ban first hitting. Now 2 or 3 years later I think only two of those places reopened with new owners.
Restaurants are largely unaffected by smoking bans, as everyone already knew would be the case. However, to bars the bans are a blight on an industry already plagued with more draconian dui laws and lawsuits. After bans pass you will see lots of glowing articles about how "the hospitality industry is unaffected!" but then read the fine print and every single one of them lumps restaurants in with bars, skewing the statistics. They won't put the numbers out for just bars because they know they are horrendous.
And this is to say nothing of the loss of tax revenue. Bars and liquor are heavily taxed, and especially today in poor economic times, with our state selling off public buildings to try to meet the budget, the LAST thing we should be doing is discouraging tax paying businesses with stupid, intrusive, 'do gooder' laws like these.
I know this is a long post, and I am sorry for that, but I think people outside our industry just really don't have any idea of how bad things really are with these bans and maybe a first hand perspective might help.
