BonnerSprings.com

Photo by Jesse Truesdale

John Elliott, left, jokes with Dan Cranfeld as he shoots pool at Kobi’s Bar and Grill, 113 Oak St. Elliott is a regular at the bar and Cranfeld is a line cook there; both are smokers.

If a smoking ban comes to pass in Wyandotte County, the owners of some local eating and drinking establishments fear they could lose business.

Mike MacDonald, co-owner and operator of Mac’s Place, 580 S. Fourth St., Edwardsville, said he knew the current owner of a bar he sold in Lenexa was “severely affected” when that city passed an ordinance banning smoking.

“They lost 60 percent of their business overnight,” he said.

The Wyandotte County ban would cost the restaurant and bar, he said, not just by loss of business but because he would feel compelled to build a patio to accommodate his smoking patrons.

“It would probably cost $10,000 upfront to build a patio,” MacDonald said.

At Sisters Restaurant & Bar, 11657 Kaw Drive, co-owner and operator Janice Barnes said the ban could adversely affect her business.

“If they did the nonsmoking here, I think it would really hurt us,” Barnes said. “We have a lot of smokers, and a lot of nonsmokers,” who sit in a nonsmoking section.

“I’ve heard a lot of people, they would say they would have to start just staying at home,” Barnes said, if a smoking ban passed that didn’t allow an exception for her restaurant.

At Kobi’s, 113 Oak St., Vickie Kobialka, manager, echoed MacDonald and Barnes’s sentiments.

“We’ve been smoking for 22 years,” Kobialka said. “Ninety percent of our customers smoke … Don’t make me pick and choose what customers I serve. It will hurt half our business.”

Kobialka said she knows a lot of Shawnee establishments were hurt by the ban passed there and since then Kobi’s has attracted customers from there who come so they can smoke in her bar.

She said she would probably have to spend money enclosing the bar’s patio in back and if an exception were allowed for clubs, the bar would have to close by law for 10 days between its status as a bar and its opening as a club.

John Elliott, Bonner Springs, was smoking a cigarette Tuesday evening at the bar as he joked with Dan Cranfeld.

“I’d look at it as an inconvenience,” Elliott said, if he couldn’t smoke in the bar, where he said he comes often.

“I’d probably step outside,” he said. “I’m not looking to inconvenience anybody with my habit,” though he said he thought the ban itself was “like communism,” because it entailed government “telling people what to do.”

Another customer at Kobi’s, Don Ova, a resident of Green Valley, Mo., who’s been visiting his son in Bonner Springs, said he’s been coming to the bar every day during his visit.

A nonsmoker, Ova said he’d likely go to Kobi’s “about the same” if it were nonsmoking.

Up a couple doors from Kobi’s at Red Fortune Chinese Restaurant, 117 Oak St., manager Maria Lui said when the business went nonsmoking two years ago it didn’t make that much difference.

“There were not really any complaints,” Lui said, though she said she knew she lost one smoker.

The change was started because of her asthma, Lui said.

“Smokers come a little less,” she said, but she figured they just get carryout.

“It’s about the same, because people want food,” she said.

Her mother, Chi Yuk Wong, predicted that customers preferring a nonsmoking restaurant would make up for the number of customers whose business they might lose.

“It kind of evens out,” Lui said. “It’s also healthier for kids.”

Comments