About a month ago, Tom wrote a great Post-Tax Guide for Tobacconist and Cigar Manufacturers. The U.S.A. is not the only place that is feeling the brunt of high taxes and tobacco bans (i.e. Canada, the UK, and elsewhere).
The UK’s situation, with their draconian anti-smoking laws enacted in 2007, is particularly interesting. The UK laws prevented smoking in any workplace, enclosed public areas, restaurants, bars, public houses and private clubs. Cigars could only be smoked in a specialist cigar shop (only for tasting and testing purposes) and, obscurely enough, in lunatic asylums and prisons. Even hotel rooms now need to equip their separately-designated smoking rooms with a separate ventilation systems.
So how’s it going in the UK? Not even three years have passed, and a vibrant cigar culture has returned to London. “[Cigar friendly establishments] are opening up in London at the rate of one a week” says Jemma Freeman, the sixth-generation owner of the London-based cigar importer Hunters & Frankau.
So what was it that let London tobacco retailers turn things around for themselves?
If you recall, Tom recommended that tobacconists mind the shopping and smoking experience. The shops need to do everything you can to put customers in seats and keep them there. And of course, the guests have to be made comfortable. It seems that many of these establishments took plays right out of Tom’s playbook. The cigar retailers and cigar-friendly establishments are going the extra mile to make London cigar-friendly.
Here are some examples of what these retailers did:
Geoffrey Gelardi, the managing director of London’s Lanesborough Hotel, transformed a small paved area off one of his private dining rooms into a cigar lounge, “which due to our English weather had virtually never been used,” he says. Gelardi doubled his monthly earnings from his former indoor cigar bar. He noted that cigar smokers like to linger, and when they linger, they spend.
Over at the Mark’s Club, they converted a small, seldom-used terrace into an al fresco canopied drawing room with Persian rugs, upholstered chairs, and sofas, expressly for cigar smokers.
Sir Terence Conran’s Boundary Hotel and restaurant in Shoreditch has a wonderful rooftop cigar garden, where customers can light up a cigar and enjoy stunning views over the city all while being under Welsh wool blankets around an open fire.
It’s certainly encouraging to know that U.S. retailers and tobacconists still have options to thrive. For example, in New York, Rick’s Cabaret has recently opened a cigar-friendly rooftop lounge. A new place to smoke is always good news for cigar smokers. That’s something we all have to look forward to.
via Newsweek
Related posts:
- Spain Smoking Ban to Stretch to Bars and Restaurants
- Cigar Smokers Key to Future of British Restaurants
- What Smokeless Tobacco Laws Mean for Cigar Smokers
- Tobacco bans: Killing small businesses, not saving lives
- Savannah Mayor Seeks Ban on Cigar Shop Smoking
Tags: cigar shop, cigars, politics, smoking ban, UK
