Drink Talking: Alison Smith

A daytime smoking ban has transformed business - but may not work for everyone, says Alison Smith of Bar One Nine, Keynsham, Somerset.

By far the largest proportion of the UK population is non-smoking, yet the licensed trade, generally speaking, fails to cater well for this group. Looking at measures in place to provide for non-smokers in licensed venues, it is apparent that they are not being taken seriously.

When we purchased our bar in December 2003 the vast majority of customers smoked.

We could see a clear market opportunity ahead for non-smokers. As a high street bar surrounded by other licensed premises we would be unique in offering a completely non-smoking facility.

We have a single bar so promoting a no-smoking area was out of the question. Our approach was to introduce a complete daytime ban.

We pitched our bar to cater for the lunchtime market of business customers, residents and shoppers who used and worked on the high street.

On the day we launched our new policy we had no way of anticipating the response, new customer take-up or the difficulties of policing such a move.

Most notably we found that most people expected to be able to smoke in a "pub". Customers would enter the bar with a lit cigarette or light up at the bar. The majority were incredulous when asked to put out their cigarettes.

Nine months down the line our clientele has changed 100 per cent. From a predominantly smoking customer-base, 90 per cent are now non-smokers. As far as we are concerned a smoking ban has been an unquestionable success. Our turnover has increased and continues to grow strongly, especially in high gross profit areas such as food, wine and coffee categories.

Our customers are now largely drawn from a section of the population who don't typically eat or drink out because of a lack of smoke-free venues.

A smoke-free environment is now an integral part of our bar concept. Our policy will not work for every venue, however.

We planned carefully to subsidise any shortfall in takings following our ban. By moving before a nationwide ban we believe we have already secured a solid base of no-smoking customers.

Introducing a smoking ban, as with any major change to your business, requires careful planning, targeted marketing and will often need subsidising.