Dan Linehan
The Free Press
MANKATO
October 16, 2006 01:05 am
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For Terry Homer, customers are a precious commodity.
As commander of Mankato’s American Legion, Homer knows that those who stop coming can’t be replaced by boosting advertising or making menu changes. Sure, anyone can get buzzed in, but the club atmosphere makes it a relatively closed club.
“You want everyone to be healthy, but it’s (the smoking ban) putting a crimp into everything we do as service clubs,” he said.
Three months and change after Mankato’s smoking ban began on July 1, the story can be told most simply by separating the winners from the losers.
On one side are the service clubs and many — but not all — of the bars in Mankato that claim to have lost business. So far, 15 businesses have earned nine-month exemptions to the ban by proving a loss of 15 percent or more between July and September.
It would be easy to speculate the bars of North Mankato and other surrounding communities have benefited from the ban. The data from one local beer distributor show that Mankato’s former patrons have indeed crossed the river.
The beer story
If you drink Miller in Mankato or anywhere in the 10-county area, Tom Richards delivered your beer. He’s the Mankato branch manager of the Locher Bros., the sole distributor of a wide array of brands, Miller included, in this region.
When Richards discusses the sales records of his clients, he looks at what he calls the “trend change.”
Some bars and restaurants already are trending a certain way, regardless of the smoking ban. So when Richards calculates recent sales trends, he takes that into account.
If a bar, for example, faced steady declines of 2 percent before the ban but was up 6 percent afterward, Richards would say the trend change is 8 percent.
Mankato and North Mankato share an equal trend change in the “high single digits” since the ban began. The kicker, of course, is that Mankato’s beer sales are down that much while North Mankato’s have risen.
His numbers include 45 bars in Mankato and eight in North Mankato, so the effects are obviously unequal in total dollar amounts.
Richards, however, quickly cautions that he represents a little less than half of beer sales, which are themselves a little less than half of total alcohol sales. That means that his numbers account for less than a quarter of all alcohol sold.
In smaller towns around Mankato — Lake Crystal, Eagle Lake, Madison Lake, Nicollet, Good Thunder and Kasota — the trend of bars improved by about 5.5 percent over the past three months.
Richards also said his data shows that smokers aren’t choosing to drink at home, if a lack of change in liquor store sales is any indication.
Mankato’s other beer distributor declined to comment for this story except to reply that the exemptions tell the story.
A large liquor distributor in the area, St.Paul-based Griggs, Cooper & Co., reported that the ban was hurting their Mankato clients, but didn’t have exact figures.
Soren Sorensen is the company’s district manager for southern Minnesota and said his clients blame recent sales losses on the smoking ban.
A notable exception
While some bar owners talk about 20 or 30 percent losses, Chris Rugowski scoffs at the notion that the ban is keeping customers out of his bar, The Underground.
His September business was up almost 19 percent compared to last year. Rugowski credits the completion of a nearby parking ramp for the success, but doesn’t think he would have done better without the ban.
He said that young smokers aren’t offended at the ban because they’ve been lighting up outside all their lives — at school, work, home. Smoking bans are “inevitable,” Rugowski said, as smaller cities such as Mankato “catch up” to the likes of New York City and the dozen or so states with bans.
Clubs hurt more
Service clubs appear to be hurting the most, as the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and Moose Lodge all reported declines of 30 percent or more.
The American Legion’s Homer said he’s lost half his business, including about $15,000 in gambling revenue in one month.
“If we don’t have that money, we’re not going to be able to give to those special programs that have been the cornerstone of the service clubs,” Homer said. “When people come in and ask for donations to a charity event, we can’t give it.”
But the VFW’s newly elected commander-in-chief, Gary Kurpius, has a different opinion.
“We’re kind of stuck in the rut of the ’60s and ’70s,” said Kurpius, a native of the northern Minnesota town of Babbitt. Young people don’t want to bring their families to smoky clubs, Kurpius suggested.
And he stresses that his thoughts are only that — suggestions meant to “plant some seeds” of new thinking designed to make the VFW relevant to younger veterans.
His idea about smoking is just one of many, which include adding baby sitters, workout areas and even Internet-ready computers.
As for reaction to those thoughts, he said: “Young people seem to be for it. Some of the old people are ingrained in their ways ... they know they have to change, but they’re diggin’ in their heels right now.”
The local Moose Lodge president, Roger Hannum, shares Homer’s perspective: “This has really killed us.”
Hannum had hoped that the club’s nonsmoking members would visit more often, but that hasn’t happened. The Moose club has received an exemption to the ban, along with Morson-Ario VFW and the Eagles club.
To smoke or not to smoke?
While at least a dozen or so bars have received a nine-month exemption from the ban, at least one business with declining revenues is choosing to adapt and stick it out rather than face multiple switches if the referendum fails this fall.
T.J. Finnegan’s owner Ron Doty said he’s lost about a quarter of his business but won’t apply for the exemption because it would interrupt a transition in his business plan to focus more on food.
Even if the referendum fails, Doty said it’s his “gut instinct” to keep his restaurant nonsmoking.
An August poll by Clearway Minnesota of 5,500 registered voters found that 58.4 percent of Mankatoans want to keep the ban while 19.3 percent would vote against it. The other 22.1 percent didn’t answer or were undecided.
Doty sums up the bar owners’ reaction to the smoking ban and their search for new customers.
“We haven’t found that crowd yet.”
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