Effects of 1998 California Smoking Ban on Bars, Taverns and Night Clubs

American Beverage Institute ^ | July 1998 | Unknown

[Just another Joe]

Effects of 1998 California Smoking Ban on Bars, Taverns and Night Clubs

300 alcoholic beverage serving operations were surveyed. The sample was selected at random from a list of 7,216 beverage license holders provided by the Alcohol Beverage Control. The sample breaks down by property type as follows:

Type of Establishment	Percentage of Respondents
Bar Connected to Restaurant/Hotel	57.3%
Stand-alone Bar/Tavern	35.7%
Nightclub	7.0%

Of the 300 beverage operations surveyed, 3.7% of the establishments did not actively enforce the ban while an additional 22.6% indicated that customers simply ignored the ban. Overall, this implies that smoking still occurs in approximately one out of every four establishments.

The survey results indicate that the majority of establishments (59.3%) experienced a decrease in business since the ban went into effect on January 1, 1998, while 30.3% experienced no effect, 3.7% refused to answer or did not know and only 6.7% experienced an increase in business. The 178 establishments that experienced a decrease in business averaged a 26.2% decrease in sales, with over a third of the establishments (35.4%) experiencing a decline of over 30%. In contrast, the 20 establishments that experienced an increase in business averaged only a 7.8% increase in sales, with the majority (60.0%) experiencing less than 10% increase.

Of the establishments that experienced a decrease in business, 89.3% experienced a decrease in weekday customer traffic and 81.5% experienced a decrease in weekend customer traffic. In contrast, 60% of the establishments that experienced an increase in business experienced no effect to average weekday customer traffic, while 70% experienced an increase in weekend customer traffic.

Separating the respondents by establishment type indicates that bars attached to restaurants/hotels may have been less adversely affected than stand-alone establishments and nightclubs since the ban went into effect on January 1, 1998. According to the survey, only 44.8% of the connected establishments reported a decrease in business, as opposed to 81.3% of the stand-alones and 66.7% of the nightclubs. In terms of average customer traffic, only 47.4% of connected establishments indicated a decrease in weekday counts, while only 37.4% indicated a decrease in weekend counts. The largest percentage of connected establishments reported no effect to either weekday (47.4%) or weekend (49.1%) counts. In direct contrast, 79.6% of stand-alones and 61.9% of nightclubs indicated decreases in weekday customer traffic, while 75.0% of stand-alones and 57.1% of nightclubs indicated a decrease in weekend customer traffic.

The smoking ban appears to have had the following negative impact on the respondent's operations:

• 50.4% of the respondents indicated an increase in customer complaints/fights;
• 65.0% indicated a loss of regular customers;
• 59.0% indicated a loss of tips/gratuities for the bar and/or serving staff.

[Great Dane]

Bullshit and propaganda is right, my husband retired with almost a years unused sickleave.

[evilsmoker]

50.4% of the respondents indicated an increase in customer complaints/fights;

You can count me as part of that percentage. I'm not too good at following the rules.