One Year After State Smoking Ban, Village Pub Sees Better Business, Health

July marks the one-year anniversary of the state smoking ban, and the two-year anniversary of Shorewood’s smoking ban.

Savanna Oehrle, who has been a manager of the for five years, said the smoking bans have increased their business, bringing in new customers who had been uncomfortable in the smoky atmosphere.

After the Shorewood smoking ban was implemented on July 1, 2009, Oehrle said despite losing some customers, food sales went up and alcohol sales held steady.  

“We had a lot more people coming to eat, especially families during the day,” Oehrle said. “A lot of non-smokers would stay longer because it wasn’t so smoky.”

Although many Wisconsin tavern owners said they lost business after the state ban, a survey conducted by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that 72 percent of bartenders supported the law after it was implemented.

Maureen Busalacchi, executive director of SmokeFree Wisconsin, said in the first six months after the law was passed, state figures showed that business in Wisconsin’s hospitality industry rose 1.5 percent over the previous year. In bars, business was up 3.5 percent during that same period.

When Shorewood was deciding whether to implement the smoking ban a year ahead of the state ban, a primary concern was that it would cause an “island effect,” pushing customers out of Shorewood to surrounding bars where they could smoke.

Oehrle said the pub did lose some smoking customers when the village ban took effect, but that the state ban relieved this predicament.  

“Some people would go to the next closest bar, but we got all of them back when the ban went statewide,” Oehrle said.

In addition to gaining business, Oehrle said the ban has improved the health and happiness of bartenders and customers.

“It’s hard to sit through an eight-hour shift in a cloudy smoke-filled bar, and our bar would get really smoky,” Oehrle said.

Allison Miller, a spokeswoman for the American Cancer Society, said the ban has succeeded in limiting public exposure to secondhand smoke.

“From our perspective, things are working really well,” she said. “The law was always intended to be about public health and it’s clearly working when it comes to protecting workers and everybody in Wisconsin from the dangers of secondhand smoke in work places, including bars and restaurants.”

However, for some tavern owners and bartenders who depend on steady customers and good tips, this is little consolation for declining sales they attribute to the smoking ban.

“I would say that the law is not working very well,” Rob Swearingen, president of the Tavern League, said. “There are quite a few of our members that have taken a real hit, some as much as 40 to 60 percent loss in business, especially during the winter months when we are forced to go outside and smoke in subzero weather.”

While some taverns have built outdoor areas for their smoking customers, not all of them can do so, he said.

“A lot of our members don’t have the resources to build a smoking enclosure. Coupled with the economy, the smoking ban is the last nail in the coffin for some of these people,” Swearingen said.  

Barbara Mercer, senior vice president of the Tavern League, said her Madison bar took a big hit due to the “double whammy” of the smoking ban and the bad economy.

“I just sold my bar yesterday after 20 years because it was either that or close it,” she said in an interview Friday. “A good part of it was the economy, no question about that, but I had to lay off nine full-time employees in the last year.”

Mercer said she was disheartened by Gov. Scott Walker’s announcement last week that he will not support a repeal of the ban. Walker was an opponent of the legislation but now says he believes it is working.

“It’s just one more thing that the governor has lied to us about,” Mercer said. “We’re very disappointed in his position to not look at this and make some exceptions and changes.”