E-Butts Helping Bar Venue A Little Bit So Far, And.....

[Mantis1]

Ok Joe, I thought about this while i was in the shower just now. The only way I can see a club losing money to ppl smoking is IF there is a line waiting to get in and the ppl smoking are out back. The club would be at capacity. The potentail money waiting outside would in reality be waiting for a smoker ( or nonsmoker) to exit the club, so they could enter. Still doesn't really work that well in my little brain. Educate me Master!

But doesn't the same thing happen when ppl go to the bathroom? There is a space open at the bar but the bar (firemarshall) won't let another parton in

No more urinals in Bars !!!!!!!!!! It must be so!!!!!

Oh and no more food. If you eat, you can't be drinking ( I know, I know... analogy ( insult to Diafel) doesn't work. but it might for Joe

If a customer wants 6 drinks in one hour can they do that AND smoke outside????? YES!!!!

They would be blotto and leave or be cut off.

If a cust wants 6 drinks in 4 hours can they do that and smoke???? Are they likely to have more by being there longer?????? Even with breaks?????? Hmmmmmmm ???????????

Logic or reality, reality or logic?????? Pick one please! The other one !!! Reality!!!!

 

[Paradigm Karaoke]

ummm....Mantis......maybe some decaf? i can feel you about to pop a blood vessel. :worriedpill:

 

[Diafel]

( I know, I know... analogy ( insult to Diafel) doesn't work.

Not an insult to me at all.
After all, it's not me that looks deficient for knowingly using an analogy that doesn't work.

 

[c. staley]

The problem is that when they go outside to smoke, they can't take their drinks (here in Michigan). When they play darts or pool, they can drink/sip between every shot they take.

 

[JoeChartreuse]

A customer is gonna drink as much as they are gonna drink ( til cut off).

.

Sorry Bazza, but YOU are wrong, and I have done the business analysis to prove it, bacause I HAD to.

However, I would like to add that you have the coolest signature line around! ;-}

 

[Bazza]

Sorry Bazza, but YOU are wrong, and I have done the business analysis to prove it, bacause I HAD to.

However, I would like to add that you have the coolest signature line around! ;-}

Then obviously your analysis was wrong. :laughpill:

You still haven't explained to me exactly what the difference is between a Karaoke singer singing a 5 minute song and not drinking V/S a smoker outside smoking for five minutes and not drinking.

The problem is that when they go outside to smoke, they can't take their drinks (here in Michigan). When they play darts or pool, they can drink/sip between every shot they take.

It depends here. Out the front door? No. Out the back door to a fenced patio area? Yes.

 

[c. staley]

Then obviously your analysis was wrong. :laughpill:

You still haven't explained to me exactly what the difference is between a Karaoke singer singing a 5 minute song and not drinking V/S a smoker outside smoking for five minutes and not drinking.

I hate those songs!.... I have one guy who has the unique talent of selecting ONLY songs that are in the 5 to 7 minute range..... drives me nuts.


RE: going outside to smoke, Bazza said:

Then It depends here. Out the front door? No. Out the back door to a fenced patio area? Yes.

You can go out either way here, but there better not be a table and chair(s) outside because if there are, it's also becomes an extension of the "no smoking area."

 

[Diafel]

Where I live, there is also a no smoking ban.
I must say that Joe is absolutely correct in his analysis.
It's been well over 10 years since the ban came into effect here and the service industries have never fully recovered.
People who smoke tend to be quite militant about it. Before I get flack, yes I KNOW that there are exceptions, so please don't focus on that, but it's been my experience.
People who smoke will go to the places that allow them to do so. I had a "friend" who, when I quit smoking many years ago, refused to come to my house because I would no longer let her smoke inside, and I have known many just like her.
What has happened here is that immediately, people did not go out at all, preferring to stay home and drink. They discovered that it was much cheaper than a night out. When they did go out, they "loaded up" at home to save money and also to shorten the time they would have to be running outside to smoke.
To this day, most places do no get even close to busy before 11:00, whereas before the ban, you had better get your butt out no later than 9:30 or you wouldn't get a seat.
When they are out, as someone else said, whole tables leave the bar en masse to go out and smoke. I've literally seen a PACKED bar EMPTY due to people outside smoking. If the weather is not too cold, they tend to stay out there longer, because the conversations flow, they meet new people, etc. On average, Joe is correct. The average stay outside seems to be at least 10 minutes and oftentimes longer. When they are outside and their drinks are in, they cannot possibly be drinking them.
When singing, however, the average song is roughly 3 to 4 minutes, tops. Plus, they can hold the mic in one hand and their drink in another. Same for darts and pool tables. They bring their drinks with them.
In our area, there are currently NO licensed outdoor patios. This can happen in the summer when they are allowed for the tourist season, but the rules on supervising and controlling them are very strict and most don't bother with it. Besides, like Chip said, once it's licensed, it becomes a no smoking zone, so it's a moot point.
I also have many years running bars and can tell you that when the customer doesn't have drink in hand, he's not drinking. Not drinking = less drinks consumed in the allowable time.
There is not a given limit that people drink. They don't generally go out and decide to have exactly 5 drinks. They go out to have "some" drinks. They don't cap it off when they hit 5. If they do hit 5 and there's time, they have another. But if a good 2 hours (as shown by Joe's CORRECT mathematical calculations) of that time was spent outside instead of inside drinking, well, less time = less drinks.
It's not hard to figure out.

 

[Bazza]

LOL...well we must agree to disagree then as what you people believe to be true is nothing like it is here in New York. Here, people still go to bars, drinkers still drink and smokers still smoke.
Also perhaps it has to do with time. The NY smoking ban has been in place for nearly a decade. While there certainly was an initial rebellion/dip when it was new, that has long since past and now it makes no difference.

I still hold to my opinion that all your evidence is anecdotal. "After the smoking ban people stopped coming, so we had to close our doors" is a quote I read on the net. It could also have been because of high prices & crappy service, but smoking is the easy scapegoat. You all make the leap (and it is a leap) that going outside to smoke results in less total drinks by a given person because they have "no drink in hand", therefor they are drinking less = buying less = less profit, but this is purely anecdotal. As I said before people don't drink continuously (ie: like an IV drip). They put their drink down. They talk. They play pool. They sing Karaoke. They go to the bathroom. They dance...and they smoke. Joe's "formula" is about as unscientific as you can get unless he is tracking ALL patrons and everything they are doing, every minute. It is akin to saying "Global Warming is false because we have had so much snow", "We never wore seatbelts as kids and we didn't die" or "My grandpa smoked every day of his life and lived to be 99". It doesn't mean that climate change isn't real, seat belts are unnecessary or smoking isn't hazardous. There is much more at play.

The smoking ban is still a hot topic for sure with many opinions on both sides. This was interesting: http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2010/apr/05/smoking-ban-didnt-hurt-most-restaurants-bars-ar-184423/ and this from Winston-Salem...a tobacco town.

 

[possumdog]

The thing that I have also heard blamed for lower bar sales are the stricter drunk driving laws and enforcement. We had two Sheriff's parked kitty corner to the Hell Hole last week and that resulted in the bar tendress having to stay an extra hour just to dispense coffee and sell $1 bags of potato chips. Not a great revenue producer. So there ARE people like me who do go out with the idea of only having so many drinks in the allotted time. That is why I like bars with food or something else to sell so I can pay for my seat in other ways than alcohol. I think the whole concept is probably due for a rewrite and bars will need to evolve with the times. Smoking/non-smoking is part of a larger picture that also involves the changing attitudes/enforcement toward drunk driving and the economy taking a dive.

I know our pay depends on the till but I don't know that I want to thrive on encouraging young people to drink 4 drinks an hour, puke all over the bathroom and parking lot, black out, fight, etc.--although I do recall going through a puke phase when I first hit drinking age (and learned I can't drink that much). It makes for a strange karaoke atmosphere that is probably not our target audience. I know that some brew pubs in the area where I used to work also served trendy food and were thriving despite no smoking. It will be interesting to see when one of our venues goes non-smoking if it will be a jumpstart or the last nail in the coffin.

 

[c. staley]

The thing that I have also heard blamed for lower bar sales are the stricter drunk driving laws and enforcement. We had two Sheriff's parked kitty corner to the Hell Hole last week and that resulted in the bar tendress having to stay an extra hour just to dispense coffee and sell $1 bags of potato chips. Not a great revenue producer. So there ARE people like me who do go out with the idea of only having so many drinks in the allotted time. That is why I like bars with food or something else to sell so I can pay for my seat in other ways than alcohol. I think the whole concept is probably due for a rewrite and bars will need to evolve with the times. Smoking/non-smoking is part of a larger picture that also involves the changing attitudes/enforcement toward drunk driving and the economy taking a dive.

One club I worked had a state cop that liked to park across the street in plain sight at 1:00am daring anyone to come out.... He did this 4 times and finally the owner of the club walked out and calmly told him to move on or he would be reported for harassment. He got the message and left.

The owner didn't have a problem with the cop driving up and down the street ("patrolling"), but it became a problem when he'd park and just sit there.

 

[possumdog]

Yes--it comes and goes in phases. The owner or bartendress will make a complaint and they go away and then time passes and they are back. There are small town politics involved, I am told.

 

[Mantis1]

scuse me but ... "NON smoking Ban" or "smoking ban"?

I think i'm beginning to understand where she's coming from now . LOL.

For sure, stricter DUI, laws have very much hurt bar sales over the last 20 years. Add in piracy... ( sorry couldn't resist) not enuff ppl use cabs and those who do drive don't wanna go any further than the closest one or 2 clubs. Smoking ban ( or non smoking bans) don't seem to be hurting anything here my neck o de woods.

 

[JoeChartreuse]

One club I worked had a state cop that liked to park across the street in plain sight at 1:00am daring anyone to come out.... He did this 4 times and finally the owner of the club walked out and calmly told him to move on or he would be reported for harassment. He got the message and left.

The owner didn't have a problem with the cop driving up and down the street ("patrolling"), but it became a problem when he'd park and just sit there.

We have a "100 yard" law here. Cops can't just park at a bar. However, one place is across the street from a gas staion with a huge parking lot, and it closes at 8pm. A cop would park at the far end of the lot (in plain sight) and "accidentally" hit his gumballs every once in awhile. In this case it WAS harrassment, as the bar owner apparently dumped the cop's sister.

The cop eventually got suspended, sued, then left the force, but not before almost shutting this bar down..

 

[Diafel]

I still hold to my opinion that all your evidence is anecdotal.

Definitely NOT anecdotal, though obviously, my examples are. The service industry organizations have been studying this ever since in came into effect and the end result is that it most definitely HAS affected sales and cause many businesses to close.
I can't currently find the article I read some time ago, but here's a couple of interesting links.
http://www.cantheban.ca/02BanResult/Falling/Falling.html
http://www.cantheban.ca/02BanResult/ban.html
Also, like Possumdog said, the new, stricter drinking/driving laws have driven another huge blow to the industry.
Believe me, this isn't solely anecdotal. They ARE watching and studying the effects carefully. So much so that the industry organizations have pressured the government to review the new law, and they have all the numbers to back it up, right back to when the smoking ban was implemented and sales were driven into the dirt, to now, where the recovery from the smoking ban is passable, at best. The new DD laws are only serving to kick them while they're down.
BTW, it's most definitely not increased prices etc, that is the problem. The effect was palpable immediately and sales numbers have not recovered to what they were to this day. I've been in the industry for well over 25 years and can honestly tell you that this is not in my head. Nor is it in Joe's.

It is akin to saying "Global Warming is false because we have had so much snow", "We never wore seatbelts as kids and we didn't die" or "My grandpa smoked every day of his life and lived to be 99". It doesn't mean that climate change isn't real, seat belts are unnecessary or smoking isn't hazardous. There is much more at play.

Let me use your own analogy against you.
You saying that the smoking ban has not affected the hospitality industry is akin to saying "Global Warming is false because we have had so much snow",etc, etc.
Just because you can't or won't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It most certainly does!

 

[Bazza]

Definitely NOT anecdotal, though obviously, my examples are. The service industry organizations have been studying this ever since in came into effect and the end result is that it most definitely HAS affected sales and cause many businesses to close.
I can't currently find the article I read some time ago, but here's a couple of interesting links.
http://www.cantheban.ca/02BanResult/Falling/Falling.html
http://www.cantheban.ca/02BanResult/ban.html

Those are interesting links. However they make the same leap as well. Yes, according to their charts bar patronage is falling. Yes, more drinking is taking place at home. Yes, the decline appears to have started around the same time. Therefor they conclude that smoking bans are causing people to drink at home. This is 100% Anecdotal. There are thousands of other factors at play that may cause bar patronage to slip. Employment/Unemployment. The economy. Birth rates. Drink Prices. Disposable income. Age of the drinking population. Etc. Not to mention many other kinds of businesses that have nothing to do with smoking, also have had a drop at the same time. These are conveniently not mentioned however.

They ARE watching and studying the effects carefully. So much so that the industry organizations have pressured the government to review the new law, and they have all the numbers to back it up, right back to when the smoking ban was implemented and sales were driven into the dirt, to now, where the recovery from the smoking ban is passable, at best. The new DD laws are only serving to kick them while they're down.

Of course they are. Smoking is BIG business. The tobacco lobbies are massive. Do you remember the hundreds of studies in the 70's "PROVING" that smoking wasn't hazardous to your health? These are the same people on the smoking-ban bandwagon.

Let me use your own analogy against you. You saying that the smoking ban has not affected the hospitality industry is akin to saying "Global Warming is false because we have had so much snow",etc, etc.
Just because you can't or won't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It most certainly does!

Ah. But the difference is that proof of climate change isn't anecdotal. There are reams & reams of undeniable hard data to prove it is happening. Now whether or not this is normal, man made, a normal part of nature or not is an entirely different subject...but it IS happening, even though we had record snows in New York. There is no such hard data directly smoking bans to bar revenue. It simply doesn't exist and the attempts to date are 100% conjecture.

 

[possumdog]

The problem with the studies is that each side will claim a bias in trying to discredit the other's studies. Even something as seemingly neutral as just measuring tax revenues (which according to govt. studies went up despite the bans, even adjusted for inflation) is questioned as not counting every type of place or counting irrevelant places like McDonalds. Yet the studies showing damages from the bans are being done by the tobacco industry. So it is difficult to know who to believe.

If electronic cigarettes help to clear the air inside a bar, I'm all for them. Unless it turns out that they are so popular that there is a room full of nicotine-laden vapor and I end up breathing it. If vegetable glycerin is a lung irritant, does it do more harm than cigarette smoke? If someone is willing to gamble their life for their habit than gambling with an irritant would seem less harmful than tobacco smoke and if it means I'm not breathing it then they get their right to impair their health without taking me with them. So study away to cover Eeyores but I hope they aren't so hypocritical as to ban something that could turn out to be of lesser harm while allowing cigarettes to remain on the market.

And yes, I inhale my coffee in the morning. (At least the vapors.)

 

[c. staley]

If electronic cigarettes help to clear the air inside a bar, I'm all for them. Unless it turns out that they are so popular that there is a room full of nicotine-laden vapor and I end up breathing it. If vegetable glycerin is a lung irritant, does it do more harm than cigarette smoke? If someone is willing to gamble their life for their habit than gambling with an irritant would seem less harmful than tobacco smoke and if it means I'm not breathing it then they get their right to impair their health without taking me with them. So study away to cover Eeyores but I hope they aren't so hypocritical as to ban something that could turn out to be of lesser harm while allowing cigarettes to remain on the market.

There are many commercially available products that really are nothing more than a "packaged irritant."

For example, any of the "heat rubs" like Ben Gay, Icy Hot, etc...

These products do NOT "create heat" at all, they are skin irritants that cause a reaction from the body to dilate the capillaries at the application spot and send white blood cells to fight the irritant. Since these capillaries are near the surface of the skin where the temperature receptors are, the "flood of warm blood" being sent there is detected and you "feel heat" where it is applied.

 

[Diafel]

Those are interesting links. However they make the same leap as well. Yes, according to their charts bar patronage is falling. Yes, more drinking is taking place at home. Yes, the decline appears to have started around the same time. Therefor they conclude that smoking bans are causing people to drink at home. This is 100% Anecdotal. There are thousands of other factors at play that may cause bar patronage to slip. Employment/Unemployment. The economy. Birth rates. Drink Prices. Disposable income. Age of the drinking population. Etc. Not to mention many other kinds of businesses that have nothing to do with smoking, also have had a drop at the same time. These are conveniently not mentioned however.



Of course they are. Smoking is BIG business. The tobacco lobbies are massive. Do you remember the hundreds of studies in the 70's "PROVING" that smoking wasn't hazardous to your health? These are the same people on the smoking-ban bandwagon.



Ah. But the difference is that proof of climate change isn't anecdotal. There are reams & reams of undeniable hard data to prove it is happening. Now whether or not this is normal, man made, a normal part of nature or not is an entirely different subject...but it IS happening, even though we had record snows in New York. There is no such hard data directly smoking bans to bar revenue. It simply doesn't exist and the attempts to date are 100% conjecture.

Birth rate??? You're kidding me, right? Sorry Bazza, but you're simply full of it.
I provided those particular links because I can't find the link I was actually looking for. The link I'm looking for does have "hard data", and NOT produced by people on a "bandwagon". It's government produced statistics. I remember checking it out recently, when the stiffer drinking driving laws came in, because it was mentioned in a news piece about the the new laws and how it was delivering yet another blow to the hospitality industry. It provided all kinds of "hard facts", as you say, about it as well as the past, when the smoking ban came in.
And although you may call it co-incidental, perhaps related to the economy, employment rate, etc, etc, that simply is NOT the case. When our ban came into effect, there was NO such factors in play. The ecomnomy didn't chnage, employment rates stayed steady, and a whole bunch of people weren't born/didn't die. The birth rate/death rate took no leaps or dives.
And there were no other businesses at the time not related to smoking affected. Not really sure where you came up with that one, because I'm talking about here in BC, Canada? I didn't realize you knew all about our economy and the history of the smoking ban here.
In fact, right after the ban came in (to my memory, I think it may have been a couple of months later), it was challenged and found to be flawed and therefore not legal. Venues immediately went back to allowing smoking. Guess what happened?
Amazingly,. sales went up again and people started going out again! But that MUST have been co-incidental, too, right?
Sadly, that only lasted roughly another couple of months before they got it right and there was no legal way to challenge it.
And it DID pretty much kill the businesses as we knew them.

 

[Diafel]

Just to be clear, I used to smoke, and did so at the time the ban went into effect. At that time, I was accused of not wanting the ban because I smoked, rather than because it hurt my pocket book. I haven't changed my stance on iota since I quit.
I have been smoke free for eight years now, and to be honest, I actually prefer a smoke free room, even when I smoked. I can remember darn near choking on the smoke in the rooms, and I smoked!
The ban is good for the lungs and the clothing no longer smells, but it's terrible for the wallet.