Posted on Thu, Feb. 04, 2010

Taking one approach, Dave Chaffin spent $45,000 to create a smoking room at Players Sports Bar & Grill.

Taking another, Richard Hunt put up a "no smoking" sign at Town & Country Restaurant.

Neither has noticed much change in business since the city's smoking ordinance went into effect 17 months ago today.

The ordinance requires any business that allows patrons under the age of 18 to ban smoking or to build a separate room, with separate ventilation, to contain it.

Many local restaurants and bars feared they'd lose business by going nonsmoking, but in general that hasn't been the case.

Don Sayler, president of the Kansas Restaurant & Hospitality Association, said one Wichita operator reported a 20 percent increase in sales right after the ban went into effect.

But "if his went up, somebody else's went down," he said.

More recently, "I haven't heard anything" about the ordinance's effect on business, he said.

Emerson Biggins in Old Town originally went nonsmoking — but that lasted less than a month.

"Because of the way the law is written, we had to choose one group of customers over another," said manager Jennifer Ray. "We had to choose which to accommodate."

It competes with other Old Town establishments for nightlife customers, so it was more profitable to remain a smoking establishment, she said.

But during the lunch hour, the restaurant reserves its eastern side for nonsmoking diners.

Emerson Biggins' second location, near 21st and Maize Road, is nonsmoking.

"They do a lot of family business, so it just works better out there," Ray said.

Chaffin, owner of Players Sports Bar & Grill, decided to appeal to both smokers and nonsmokers by adding a smoking room. He walled in what had been his smoking section and prohibits anyone younger than 18 in that area.

"You just can't slice off a percentage of your business and say, well, que sera, sera," he said of the decision. Players' business is built on a mix of customers, and adding the smoking room was a way to continue to appeal to all of them.

The room, which has seven dining tables and a pool table, "could be fuller," Chaffin said, but it "does pay for itself. It was certainly worth building."

Hunt said Town & Country had allowed smoking since its 1958 opening. When it put up its "no smoking" sign, "We lost some customers. But most of them, after a while, have come back."

He said he has no firm evidence, "but it seemed like we got a little bit of a boost from going to the nonsmoking," from customers who ate there only occasionally or not at all when smoking was allowed.

"If it was something we had done on our own, and it hadn't been a citywide deal, I think we would have had a lot more negative feedback," he said.

As it was, "the ones that we lost, we more than made up."

David Rolph, president of Sasnak Management, which runs Carlos O'Kelly's and Applebee's restaurants, said the smoking ordinance helped in one way.

"It was more difficult to utilize your seating" when smoking and nonsmoking sections had to be maintained, he said. "You had people who were standing and waiting for tables, and they could see empty tables."

Now that the ordinance has been in effect more than a year, "it's kind of passed without much of a flutter."

The ordinance probably had more effect on bars than on family dining establishments such as his, he said.

In some other states where Sasnak has properties, smoking ordinances haven't had the universality that the one here has — and that has made a difference, Rolph said: "We felt an immediate drop."

Locally, any effects were short-lived, he said. And at this point, he thinks the ordinance is a good one:

"I think it makes us all healthier. I really do. You think about our employees who don't have to work in a smoke-filled environment.... I just think it creates a generally healthier environment."

Reach Karen Shideler at 316-268-6674 or kshidelerwichitaeagle.com.