Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2011, and reports news from that month, weeks after Spain’s tougher smoking law (Ley 42/2010) took effect on 2 January 2011. The claims about losses in the hospitality sector reflect that moment and are not backed by figures.
Spain’s anti-smoking law has already caused losses in the hospitality sector. The news may try to sell the upside of the law, but the reality is that it is doing a lot of damage and translating into lost business.
Football matches no longer draw the crowds the sector was used to. That’s why some business owners in the trade are already looking for ways to get around the law. One of them is a restaurateur from Granada who, once its statutes were approved, has registered the first smokers’ club with the regional government of Andalusia.
Jesús López, who founded the Fiorentina pizzeria 15 years ago, knew this law would end up hurting him, so he came up with this clever idea. He says he spent €9,000 building the partition the law required to set up a smoking room separate from the smoke-free “wing”, and he is disappointed that the money has been of no use at all.
In February he will open the “Fiorentina Smokers Club“, where club members will be able to smoke in peace on the premises.
For any bar or restaurant owner who wants to use this route to get around the smoking ban, you should know that when you register a club it has to be non-profit, which doesn’t mean you can’t make money from it.
How to set up a smokers’ club to get around the smoking ban
- To start with, the club can’t sell anything, which means you can’t even have a cash register. You won’t have customers; you’ll have members, who pay a fee. At the Fiorentina, fees range from €1 to €50 depending on the type of membership.
- Only members may enter the premises. The good news is that, for €1, anyone can become a member in under a minute.
- The club can’t have employees. The law states that a smokers’ club may not have waiters or staff serving drinks. Each member has to serve themselves or simply bring their drinks from outside.
Once you follow these three simple rules, all that’s left is to find a way to make money. As the Spanish saying goes, whoever made the law also made the loophole, although this law has clearly been an economic trap for the hospitality sector, and now bar and restaurant owners have to make their move.
Featured image: BuzzFarmers, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
