Restaurateurs to Demand End to Smoking Ban

It took less than a week for West Hollywood’s smoking ban to set off a firestorm.

Restaurant owners, contending that the ban has caused a sudden drop in business, launched a petition drive Tuesday aimed at forcing the City Council to rescind the ordinance, which took effect Oct. 6. The owners said they would present their petitions at the council’s Oct. 25 meeting.

“I think it is very unfair,” said Ramon Ayon, general manager of Le Dome. “Most of our business is power lunches, and they want to smoke.”

Councilman Paul Koretz, the council’s primary advocate of the ordinance, said the protests and the petition drive were predictable.

“As far as I can tell, it is just the same people who have hated the concept since before it was enacted,” he said.

The ban was conceived as part of a regional effort to stop smoking in restaurants. The city of Los Angeles took the first step with a ban that went into effect Aug. 2. The Santa Monica City Council is scheduled to vote on a similar ordinance late this month.

The biggest concern in West Hollywood, however, is with Beverly Hills, where the City Council has delayed taking action. West Hollywood restaurateurs maintain that smokers are stampeding across the city line with their business.

“I have to compete with the guy down the block in Beverly Hills,” said Cafe Figaro owner Derek Chasin.

Robert Madden, manager at Cafe D’Etoile, said 16 people decided not to dine at his restaurant on Saturday night once he informed them that they could not smoke.

“It hurts us more at dinner,” said Madden, because many diners will have a few drinks and a smoke before ordering their meal. “Now they don’t stay as long or spend as much.”

The complaints were not confined to the city’s formal dining establishments. Ted Sellis, co-owner of the Argos Coffee Shop, a diner on Santa Monica Boulevard, said business was down about 20% since the ordinance became law.

“I have lost a lot of the morning crowd that have come here for 27 years,” he said. “Now they have coffee to go.”

Councilman Koretz added that he thought the growing evidence of adverse health effects of secondhand tobacco smoke on restaurant workers made the ordinance necessary.

He found enthusiastic support for his position at the Source, a vegetarian restaurant on Sunset Boulevard.

“I think it’s wonderful,” waiter Jeff Templeton said of the ban. “Why should (smokers) be able to pollute the air that I have to breathe, especially when I am waiting on tables?”