Thursday, July 11, 2002

Bar business sparks back up

By Jason Tait

Eagle-Tribune Writer

HAVERHILL -- A half-hour after the city suspended the smoking ban, an electronic sign in front of Mr. Mike's Restaurant beckoned passersby with the words "Smoking is Back."

It worked.

Inside the restaurant, owner Michael A. Difeo III watched something he has not seen for four months -- a bar packed with customers lighting up cigarettes, gambling on Keno, and enjoying sports on TV as they ate and drank.

"I've been closing an hour early every night for four months," Difeo said of the lack of customers since the smoking ban started March 1. Yesterday, "I had to ask (customers) to leave at 1 a.m.''

Mr. Mike's is on Route 125 on the Plaistow, N.H., line, and has lost 30 percent of its business to bars and restaurants across the border, Difeo said.

Until Aug. 13, when the Health Board will make a final decision on the smoking ban, restaurant owners can allow smoking in their businesses -- this following a four-month ban that owners said devastated their businesses. The smoking ban is still law, but it will not be enforced until at least the board's Aug. 13 meeting when the regulation may be changed.

Some restaurant owners like Difeo have decided to allow people to smoke for the next month in an effort to recoup some of their losses.

Leonard F. Caffrey, manager of the Ninety-Nine restaurant on River Street near Interstate 495, was relieved to hear of the smoking ban suspension.

"Hopefully we can recapture revenue we lost over the last 120 days" of the smoking ban, Caffrey said. "I think the customer base that we could not accommodate until now will be happy we can accommodate them again," he said of customers who smoke.

Caffrey said he lost between 7 percent and 18 percent of his weekly business during the past four months, and has cut his weekly staff hours by 100 -- the equivalent of 21/2 jobs -- because business is slow.

The Health Board decided to enforce the smoking ban to protect nonsmokers from secondhand smoke, encouraging families into the smoke-free environments. Health officials were hoping restaurant owners would continue to keep their businesses smoke free, even after the ban was suspended.

It has worked at some restaurants, and not all eateries are jumping on the pro-smoking bandwagon.

Stavros A. Dimakis, owner of Mark's Deli in Railroad Square, will not switch back to smoking. He has placed sand buckets outside the diner's front door and his many smoking patrons simply step outside for a cigarette, he said. He has lost only one customer that he knows of since making the restaurant nonsmoking and has gained dozens of families who previously avoided the smoke-filled business.

"Smoking is a time of the past," Dimakis said. "Going smoke free is the best thing I ever did."

Dimakis feels sorry for the restaurant owners who serve liquor, however.

"They're in a different league," Dimakis said. "Haverhill's a blue-collar town, and people are going to smoke while having drinks -- whether they do it here or in Plaistow."

At the Corner Bistro on Washington Street downtown, owner Pauline M. Lowney will allow smoking after 9 p.m. when the kitchen closes.

"I don't want to jeopardize the people coming in here now because I'm smoke free," Lowney said. "I have had more children and elderly here since we've gone smoke free."

At Benny's Food and Spirits, also on Route 125 at the Plaistow line, owner Ben Brienza has had to lay off 12 of his 58 employees because business has been slow since the smoking ban. Yesterday, however, customers were at the bar sparking up.

"What they did to us was devastating," Brienza said. "All the city did with the ban was send them over the border and let New Hampshire get more money."

At Mr. Mike's Restaurant near Benny's, Difeo said he lost 30 percent of his restaurant business and 50 percent of his Keno gambling revenue.

"I had the best six months leading into March, so it's not like it was a recession issue," Difeo said of the loss of business. "People who drink and gamble smoke cigarettes."