Smoking ban helping some Illinois Q-C businesses
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By Dustin Lemmon | Tuesday, February 05, 2008 |
After one month of not being able to smoke in his restaurant, Doug Perkins has given up his smoking habit and witnessed an unexpected increase in customers from Iowa.
Perkins, who owns Moon River Supper Club in Andalusia, Ill., said he thought his business would suffer when the no-smoking law in Illinois went into effect Jan. 1, but he was wrong.
“Even our regular customers who are smokers are still here,” Perkins said. “If anything, we’ve already had more Iowa business than what I
anticipated.”
Now that he can’t smoke at work, Perkins decided to quit. The regulars who still smoke joke about the ashtrays being gone but are willing to go
outside to light up, he said. There haven’t been any accidental incidents when someone forgot and tried to smoke inside.
Although some businesses and smokers are still adjusting to the new law, which prohibits smoking in public enclosures, most agree with Perkins that it has had positive results and done little to hurt business.
Rick Baker, president of the Illinois Quad-Cities Chamber of Commerce, said no surveys have been done to see what effect the law has had on business, but the chamber has received only positive reports from its members.
“The topic seems to come up quite often, and people have been very positive about the change,” he said. “People have said specifically they’ve gone out because of the no-smoking law.”
Baker said January is typically a slow month for businesses because of the weather. He said it might be too soon to know for sure what effect the law has had, and Perkins agreed.
“This is a hard time to tell,” Perkins said. “January is a fickle business month.”
Before the law went into effect, Pete Duytschaever, commander of the American Legion Post 246 in Moline, worried it would significantly reduce attendance at the legion’s bar and bingo nights.
“We’ve probably lost a few customers, but other than that, it hasn’t impacted us too much,” he said. “There used to be some good guys who would be in here everyday and they liked to smoke, but now they can’t, so they just stay home.”
Duytschaever has heard speculation that the state may offer legions the ability to purchase a smoking license to exempt them from the law. The legion would need a majority of its members to agree to such a move.
“I don’t think at this post here that would even pass,” he said.
Michael King, owner of Copia Martini and Wine Bar and Hickory Brothers Cigar Lounge in downtown Rock Island, is still trying to decide whether to divide his two businesses with a wall so customers can smoke in the lounge.
King is waiting to see if Illinois lawmakers give bars the chance to purchase a smoking license, but if not, he will separate the businesses by March.
For the time being, both establishments are abiding by the law and are smoke-free. The law hasn’t reduced business on the bar side but has cut cigar sales, King said.
He thinks eventually those smokers who have stopped going out because of the law will return. Even those bars that catered heavily to smokers are still busy, he said.
“Most of them are going to go back to the bars they’re used to and conform,” he said. “Those people you haven’t seen for a while will show up again. They just won’t be able to smoke.”
Perkins isn’t the only one who has been inspired to quit smoking because of the law.
Georgia Jecklin, owner of Quad-City Dental Lab in Moline, said three of her employees who smoked gave it up as soon as the law went into effect. Two more are trying to quit.
The business didn’t allow smoking in the building before Jan. 1, but since then smokers have had to move even farther from the doors or smoke in their cars, she said.
The law “was a very strong motivator to quit,” she said, adding they now have no-smoking signs up and obey the 15-foot rule that prevents smoking near doors.
As a LeClaire, Iowa, resident, Jecklin said she and her husband, who are not smokers, now go to Illinois businesses more than they have in the past.
“There have been several times where we’re going to a restaurant or bowling alley or something like that, and we’ve been more apt to go to Illinois because of the no-smoking law,” she said.
Phyllis Schwindt of Rock Island was first opposed to the law because she didn’t appreciate the government’s intrusion, but as a nonsmoker, she is happy with the results. She used to avoid some restaurants because of the smoke and has started going back to them recently.
“It’s just nice when you’re thinking of someplace to eat, you don’t have to think about it,” she said.
Dustin Lemmon can be contacted at (563) 383-2493 or dlemmon@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.
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