Red Hawk Up
The bill banning cigarette smoking in bars and restaurants in the state of Michigan passed in December of 2009, and is set to go into effect in May of the following year. Interestingly enough, there are a few restaurants that never allowed smoking inside, even before it was banned. One of them is Red Hawk.
Red Hawk is located in downtown Ann Arbor, right in the heart of the University of Michigan's campus. They opened up 15 years ago, and from day one, they never permitted smoking inside the restaurant. If you're dining or drinking there and feel the urge to light up, you have to take it outside.
I'm astonished by how few other restaurants chose to take this approach. Most other restauranteurs, when trying to determine their smoking policy, probably thought, "If we don't allow smoking, then smokers will be less inclined to eat there." Because smokers are such a large portion of the population on a college campus, it was probably a scary prospect to cut them out of potential customers.
The other side to this, of course, is that if you accomodate smokers, than you run the risk of alienating the portion of restaurant-goers that hate the smell of cigarette smoke. People have never fallen into only the two categories of "smoking" and "non-smoking". There's a third group: "non-smoking and refuses to tolerate proximity to smoking".
Red Hawk recognized the value in catering to this last group. Their food is not that expensive (and it's very good), but for the last fifteen years, they could have charged a premium for their food just for offering clients the experience of being able to eat without having to breathe second-hand smoke.
Maybe Red Hawk didn't do it for this reason. They might have just been thinking that, from a health perspective, that it was the right thing to do for their patrons and the best way of leading other restaurants by example. Maybe they did it so they could have their choice of servers in Ann Arbor who were smart and didn't smoke, and also wanted to work in an environment where they wouldn't be subjected to second-hand smoke.
Whatever the reason, it's crazy that more restaurants didn't dare to differentiate themselves by being smoke-free. I hope that their loyal following of patrons keep going their even after the rest of the restaurants are smokeless. They probably will; even in the wake of abolished smoking, most other restaurants will continue to reek of smoke for years to come.
It took guts for them to get it right the first time.
Red Hawk is located in downtown Ann Arbor, right in the heart of the University of Michigan's campus. They opened up 15 years ago, and from day one, they never permitted smoking inside the restaurant. If you're dining or drinking there and feel the urge to light up, you have to take it outside.
I'm astonished by how few other restaurants chose to take this approach. Most other restauranteurs, when trying to determine their smoking policy, probably thought, "If we don't allow smoking, then smokers will be less inclined to eat there." Because smokers are such a large portion of the population on a college campus, it was probably a scary prospect to cut them out of potential customers.
The other side to this, of course, is that if you accomodate smokers, than you run the risk of alienating the portion of restaurant-goers that hate the smell of cigarette smoke. People have never fallen into only the two categories of "smoking" and "non-smoking". There's a third group: "non-smoking and refuses to tolerate proximity to smoking".
Red Hawk recognized the value in catering to this last group. Their food is not that expensive (and it's very good), but for the last fifteen years, they could have charged a premium for their food just for offering clients the experience of being able to eat without having to breathe second-hand smoke.
Maybe Red Hawk didn't do it for this reason. They might have just been thinking that, from a health perspective, that it was the right thing to do for their patrons and the best way of leading other restaurants by example. Maybe they did it so they could have their choice of servers in Ann Arbor who were smart and didn't smoke, and also wanted to work in an environment where they wouldn't be subjected to second-hand smoke.
Whatever the reason, it's crazy that more restaurants didn't dare to differentiate themselves by being smoke-free. I hope that their loyal following of patrons keep going their even after the rest of the restaurants are smokeless. They probably will; even in the wake of abolished smoking, most other restaurants will continue to reek of smoke for years to come.
It took guts for them to get it right the first time.