Restaurateurs breathe easy as smoking ban spreads.

State law not expected to have major impact on business

The new statewide smoking ban will not affect the overall Los Angeles-area restaurant industry dramatically, but it may redistribute some of the business since smokers will no longer have an incentive to frequent eateries in jurisdictions that allow smoking, local restaurateurs said last week.

"At least it's an even playing field for everyone," said Jimmy Murphy, owner of Jimmy's restaurant in the city of Los Angeles, where smoking in restaurants was banned in June 1993.

The state Legislature July 21 passed AB 13, and Governor Pete Wilson subsequently signed the measure into law. It bans smoking in most indoor work places throughout the state as of Jan. 1, 1995. The ban covers restaurants, offices, stores, factories and hospitals. Exempted are bars, hotels, warehouses in which 20 or fewer employees work and businesses with five or fewer employees where everyone consents to a smoking office.

Smoking in restaurants has already been banned in other L.A. County cities aside from the city of L.A., such as Long Beach, Pasadena, Santa Monica, West Hollywood and Whittier.

Some restaurateurs in those cities had complained loudly that the no-smoking municipal ordinances were unfair because they encouraged smokers to flock to neighboring cities that allowed smoking in restaurants.

For instance, Murphy said his Jimmy's restaurant has lost up to 10 percent of its business as smokers chose to patronize eateries in nearby Beverly Hills, where smoking is allowed.

Many of these lost customers are groups of women who used to come to Jimmy's to linger over lunch and smoke a few cigarettes, he said.

Helfried Fahrenholz, owner of the La Marina Inn restaurant in Playa del Rey, a beach community within the city of L.A., said he has lost up to 25 percent of his lunch business because smokers opted to eat instead at restaurants in Inglewood, Culver City and Marina del Rey.

La Marina Inn is four miles from Los Angeles International Airport, and many of Fahrenholz's patrons are European and Asian tourists who are heavy smokers, he explained.

But several restaurateurs in L.A. County now say the approaching statewide ban will likely re-balance competition and, as a result, businesses in areas with local no-smoking ordinances will no longer suffer.

"Now everyone has to do it (ban smoking). It takes out the competitive edge," said Gregg Smith, vice president and co-founder of Crocodile Enterprises Inc., a Pasadena-based chain of seven restaurants in Pasadena, Santa Monica, Glendale, Burbank and Brea.

As a result, "I don't think it (the ban) will affect business," Smith said.

Owners of restaurants that have been enjoying a competitive edge, due to being in areas that allow smoking, downplayed the significance of the pending loss of that advantage.

With the statewide ban, "people aren't going to sit home and mope. They're still going to come here," said James Riggi, owner and general manager of Tribeca restaurant in Beverly Hills, where smoking is currently allowed.

The ban shouldn't affect business dramatically at Dinah's Fried Chicken in Glendale, where smoking is also allowed now, said general manager Robert Pearson.

He said he notices more and more people going outside to smoke anyway, and only an average of two patrons a day currently light up inside the restaurant.

The California Restaurant Association sponsored AB 13. "We wanted a level playing field," said Stan Kyker, executive vice president of the Mid-Wilshire-based organization.

Furthermore, the association is concerned about the health hazards of secondhand smoke to its member restaurants' employees and customers, he said.

The association represents and supports the interests of the food service industry. It has 3,400 members who are restaurateurs or otherwise affiliated with food service.

Despite their insistence that the statewide ban will not have a significant affect on their businesses, Riggi, Fahrenholz and some other Southland restaurateurs said they plan to vote for Proposition 188 on the state's November ballot. That measure, if passed, would supersede AB 13 and permit smoking in restaurants and most other buildings throughout the state.

"I think smokers have the right to smoke," Riggi said.

"I don't think they (government officials) have the right to tell me how to run my business," Fahrenholz added.