Owner of Bar Bans Smoking; Business ‘Doubling by Week’

Customers at the Adams Landing Bar and Restaurant will not have to look for the nonsmoking section. The whole place is off-limits to smokers.

Operating on his belief that public sentiment against cigarettes is growing, owner Larry Adams opened his new nonsmoking establishment three weeks ago in the Pontiac-Oakland Airport in suburban Waterford Township.

After a slow start, he said, business has been “doubling by the week” for what may be the first establishment in the Detroit metropolitan area to totally ban smoking by customers.

“There’s definitely a market,” the 43-year-old businessman said Thursday in an interview with the Detroit News. “The fact is that fewer people are smoking today and more are becoming concerned about the effects of secondhand smoke.”

Adams, an ex-smoker, said that both customers and employees like the policy. One of his waitresses, Tina Coe, was ordered by her doctor to quit smoking three months ago and was delighted to get a job in a smoke-free environment.

“A lot of people said you can’t open a bar because when people drink they want to smoke,” Adams said. “Well, that’s true for about 30% of the population, but 70% don’t. So the competition can take our 30% smokers and we’ll take their 70% nonsmokers.”