Smoking Ban Helps Fox Point Businesses

Before Wisconsin's smoking ban went into effect one year ago this month, business owners across the state worried that they may not be able to survive.

And even today, officials at the Tavern League of Wisconsin say their members are taking a hit.

“The ban has been devastating to a lot of the small bars, mom-and-pop operations, where it was a blue-collar bar to begin with and most of their customers were smokers,” said Barbara Mercer, senior vice president of the organization. “I myself faced a 35 percent loss of business, and for anyone to say that the smoking ban hasn’t hurt small businesses, it’s simply not true.”

But it's a different story for small business owner Carmelo Fazzari, owner of the in Fox Point. He says business has only improved since the ban, although he began his own smoking ban five years ago.

Fazzari said he used to have separate sections in the restaurant, but the tables reserved for smokers were just a waste of money.

"I’d only have like one or two tables that would smoke, and no one else would even sit around those tables and it was costing me money," he said.

The club still has a smoking section outside on the patio, but because of the demographics of the North Shore, Fazarri says that it just wasn't helping anyone.

"Friday night, I’d have one side packed with non-smoking, and it would just ruin the night with two tables smoking," Fazzari said.

Although many Wisconsin tavern owners said they lost business after the state ban, a survey conducted by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that 72 percent of bartenders supported the law after it was implemented.

“They feel better," Maureen Busalacchi, executive director of SmokeFree Wisconsin said. "Don’t have runny noses, they’re not sneezing or coughing, or having the bloodshot eyes they used to. And they found that business has remained stable.”

And it's a similar story at Fox Point's .

Manager Lisa Butler says it's a much healthier environment because working all day in the smoke, even as an ex-smoker, can just be too much.

"I love the smoking ban," Butler said. "I’m in the (restaurant) industry and I have been for the last 12 years. I’m an ex-smoker, so it’s a nice relief to not be around smoking areas. When you're in it for eight hours a day, it gets taxing."

Susan Zacher has been a waitress at NSB for a few years now, and says overall, people like the smoking ban because the plastic partition they used to have just didn't keep the smoke where it belonged. 

"The smoke would still go over or under, so people weren’t real happy with sitting in that area. It’s a good change," she said.