Smoke Signals (Restaurants USA, February 2002) | National Restaurant Association

February 2002 issue

Smoke Signals

Restaurants USA magazine's final issue was published in September 2002 but these archived articles remain available for our readers' convenience.

Restaurants USA, February 2002

Improved indoor-air quality helps customers, employees and operators breathe easier.
By Ira Apfel

Posted: February 8, 2002

When customers began complaining about too much smoke, Glenda Dewey, general manager of the Port of Wichita restaurant in Kansas, knew she had a problem with her restaurant’s indoor-air quality. “At the end of the night at the bar, you could see the smoke in the air,” she says. Dewey knew that she needed to fix the problem or unhappy customers would leave. So Dewey, like other proactive restaurateurs around the nation, improved her establishment’s indoor-air quality to boost customer service and to show smoking-ban advocates that there was an alternative to their all-or-nothing approach.

Even smoke-free restaurants need to pay attention to their indoor-air quality, says Steven Grover, vice president of the National Restaurant Association’s Health and Safety Regulatory Affairs Department. “You could have no smoking in your restaurant and still have an indoor-air-quality problem,” he says.

Not every restaurant needs to conduct a five- or six-figure HVAC (heating, ventilation and air-conditioning) system overhaul. Many operations can improve their indoor-air quality simply by replacing air filters or making other slight adjustments to their current HVAC systems.

Improved indoor-air quality can give a restaurant a competitive advantage, especially as an increasingly health-conscious public considers its dining options. “To be successful, restaurateurs must stay focused on customer comfort, and part of that equation is providing good indoor-air quality,” says Grover. “The formula for improved customer satisfaction is pleasing all our customers and not overly simplistic mandates like public-smoking bans.”

Diffusing the problem

Operators don’t need an expert to conduct an initial assessment of their restaurant’s indoor-air quality. A few simple steps can determine whether your establishment has a ventilation problem. If you or your staff get repeated customer or employee complaints about poor air quality in your restaurant, or if you see smoke clouds lingering in your dining or bar area, you probably have an indoor-air-quality problem.

Before hiring a HVAC contractor to overhaul your system, there are several steps you can take to improve matters. First, you must understand the three principles of indoor-air quality: bringing in enough outdoor air, filtering the outdoor and recirculated air, and managing airflow.

Bringing in enough outdoor air sounds like an obvious first step, but restaurateurs often overlook this simple solution, says Erik Emblem, executive director of the National Energy Management Institute in Alexandria, Va. Energy equipment on the market today is 40 percent to 60 percent more efficient than it was 20 years ago, adds Emblem. “If your equipment hasn’t been changed in 20 years, it might need to be replaced,” he says. “The rule of thumb is that new equipment will amortize in 2 to 5 years.”

Operators should assign one staff member to oversee their restaurant’s indoor-air quality, he says. This employee should know where outside air enters the establishment, and should make sure that the dampers, which usually bring air from the outdoors into an HVAC system, are working.

“A major mistake that businesses make is assigning somebody who’s not knowledgeable about indoor-air quality [to oversee the HVAC system],” says Emblem, who together with Grover co-chairs the Hospitality Coalition on Indoor Air Quality (HCIAQ), a partnership of labor, management and business working to improve indoor-air quality. “For example, dishwashers are commonly in charge of maintaining HVAC systems and they often haven’t been trained for this.”

State and local building or mechanical codes may require that a certain amount of outdoor air be supplied to your building, so be sure to check with your local building inspector, according to Options, an indoor-air-quality resource created for businesses by Philip Morris USA, headquartered in New York City.

The second principle — filtering the outdoor and recirculated air — removes dust and particles from the air, which can help reduce housekeeping and maintenance costs, and can remove particles and odors. Most HVAC equipment is equipped with “angel hair” filters that only remove about 20 percent of the particles in the air. However, smaller particles, which are not removed by these filters, often contribute to odors and smoke haze.

Particles the size of salt grains can slip through angel-hair filters. To see if your filters have angel hair, remove the filter from your HVAC unit, hold it flat and pour table salt on it. Shake it a little and if it is angel hair the salt will fall through the filter.

In addition, check the ratings of your HVAC system’s filters, listed on the label. If your filters are not rated at least 65 percent dust-spot efficient, consider replacing them with more efficient filters. You also should remember to change your HVAC filters based on the manufacturer’s recommended filter-change schedule. Emblem recommends replacing filters every month. Once you have upgraded your filters, be sure to check them monthly, says Emblem. Once they begin to develop a sheen of black dirt, they need to be changed.

Supplying positive air pressure to nonsmoking areas and negative air pressure to smoking areas to minimize smoke drift is the third principle of indoor-air quality. As a rule, air always moves from a positively pressurized area to a negatively pressurized area. Therefore, nonsmoking areas should be positively pressurized and smoking areas should be negatively pressurized. By controlling air flow within your restaurant, you can minimize the potential for odor and smoke drift into unwanted areas.

To accomplish this principle, identify where air is supplied to your establishment (usually via supply diffusers) and where air is removed from your establishment (usually via return grilles or an exhaust fan). The goal is to locate nonsmoking areas near the majority of supply diffusers, and smoking areas near the majority of return grilles or exhaust fans.

There is one quick way to check whether your restaurant is positively pressurized. First, open the entrance door to your restaurant. If the door opens easily and air flows out, your building is positively pressurized and outside air will flow easily into your establishment. If the door is resistant and difficult to open, and air flows into the space, your building is negatively pressurized.

Creating an airflow footprint is another way to determine your restaurant’s airflow. Sketch your floor plan, noting the location of supply diffusers and return grilles or exhaust fans to ensure they are located in the proper areas to maintain proper airflow management.

Air-traffic control

The design of your restaurant’s dining rooms plays an important part in your establishment’s indoor-air quality, according to Options. Existing barriers, such as half-height walls, plants or artwork, can serve as natural dividers, designating nonsmoking and smoking areas in the restaurant.

To prevent smoke and odor from traveling into the nonsmoking area from the smoking area, air should be supplied to the nonsmoking areas and removed from the smoking areas. You can vary the size of the designated areas, based on your expected customer mix.

Restaurants that offer separate rooms with doors to accommodate smokers face a different challenge than those providing designated areas. When the door between the two rooms is opened or closed, it causes turbulence in the air and the turbulence creates “puffs” of air that will leave the room, allowing the smoke to waft into the nonsmoking room. Experts recommend that operators leave at least one doorway open to allow for a consistent flow of air between the room and the adjacent space.

Operators who offer integrated spaces without room dividers or doors face perhaps the toughest challenge of all. They have no physical barriers to separate the two customer groups, so smoke tends to drift about the restaurant. The best advice for these restaurants is to follow the three principles of indoor-air quality as closely as possible, according to Options.

Linda Lipsky, a hospitality consultant in Broomall, Pa., believes it’s virtually impossible to accommodate smokers and nonsmokers in the same seating area if there is no physical floor-to-ceiling barrier. She advises her restaurant clients to offer smoking in the bar or outside on a patio or deck, and to have plenty of ashtrays available in both areas. “Don’t post a sign that says ‘Smoking prohibited’ in the nonsmoking area, because that’s too negative,” suggests Lipsky. “Simply state smoking is permitted in the bar or outside.”

Smoke-eaters

Perhaps the biggest mistake operators make is failing to sign a service agreement with a HVAC contractor, says Emblem. Under a service agreement, a professional contractor can inspect a restaurant’s HVAC system regularly and resolve small ventilation problems before they turn into serious ones. “If nothing else, a service agreement will optimize your HVAC system and it’ll decrease your energy consumption and lower your bottom line,” he says.

To find a certified HVAC professional, Emblem recommends that operators contact the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors’ National Association (SMACNA) in Chantilly, Va.. Another resource is Options. “Thumbing through the yellow pages isn’t enough because SMACNA-certified technicians are different from ones who service private homes,” he says.

Glenda Dewey didn’t have a service contract nor was she aware of the three principles of indoor-air quality when she examined Port of Wichita’s HVAC system. Help arrived when Options officials offered guidance. Taking their advice, she lit matches in all three of her establishment’s rooms and observed which way the flame blew, so she could track the airflow. Dewey determined that the air was flowing in the right direction—out of the exhaust ducts. However, the test revealed that there was not enough air recirculating through the restaurant.

Dewey feared that she would need a more powerful and costlier HVAC unit to improve air flow. Fortunately, a contractor said the proper solution was simpler and less expensive. “The only thing we had to do was add five filtration systems to the existing system,” says Dewey. The new filters removed nearly 95 percent of all airborne particles, so the air that did flow was virtually smoke free. “It totally eliminated the smoke problem,” says Dewey. “A lot of customers have commented that they can come in on a packed Friday night and their eyes don’t water.”

The cost for the five filtration systems was $6,000, says Dewey. She highlights Port of Wichita’s clean air in all its advertising as an advantage over her competitors.

Don’t let your business go up in smoke

By following some simple steps to improve indoor-air quality at your restaurant, you can accommodate both smoking and nonsmoking patrons, improve your indoor-air quality all around, and set your sales on fire.

Public-Smoking Debate Smolders

The smoking debate has been smoldering for decades. The movement to curb smoking in public began in 1972, when Arizona passed a law protecting nonsmokers from second-hand smoke. A quarter-century later, state attorneys general successfully sued tobacco companies, and public-smoking bans have been enacted or proposed in numerous municipalities and communities around the nation.

Although there is no federal law prohibiting smoking in public, an increasing number of municipalities, counties and even states have introduced or enacted public-smoking bans. According to the National Restaurant Association, the public-smoking debate is heating up in various communities in Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. California already has a statewide public-smoking ban, enacted on January 1, 1998.

The National Restaurant Association opposes government-mandated smoking because of the dramatic economic impact bans have on restaurants and their employees. One study on the economic impact of a 1998 restaurant-smoking ban in Boston found that in the three months after the ban took effect, revenue at 600 randomly selected Boston restaurants decreased by more than 5 percent. In addition, the restaurants reported that they were employing 142 fewer workers, and that restaurant bars had laid off an average of three people each.

The Association, its state partners and like-minded organizations that favor giving operators and customers a choice, are battling to eliminate public-smoking bans. “Restaurant owners are best equipped to meet the needs of the smoking and nonsmoking public,” says Brendan Flanagan, a legislative representative for the Association. “The ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach of government-mandated smoking bans simply does not work.”

To make matters more difficult for opponents of public-smoking bans, local health boards have begun enacting the bans. Unlike elected officials, boards of health do not run for public office, so their decisions cannot be debated in the political arena.

In one such case, the regional board of health for the city of Toledo and Lucas County, Ohio, passed one of the toughest smoking bans in the country in 2001, virtually banning smoking in all hospitality establishments. The Ohio Restaurant Association (ORA) has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the rule and the State Supreme Court will hear the case, says Charles Blosser, president and chief executive officer of the ORA. “We don’t think a regulated body that doesn’t stand for election should have the right to pass such a bill,” says Blosser.

The Association’s Save American Free Enterprise Fund has donated money to support the ORA’s legal fight. Meanwhile, the Ohio state legislature has passed a bill that would bar smoking bans passed by local health boards from taking effect unless the appropriate local legislative body has approved the ban. The ORA was instrumental in securing the bill’s passage, although Ohio Gov. Bob Taft (D) has threatened to veto the bill.

As Flanagan notes, one out of four adults smoke, so a public-smoking ban could eliminate a quarter of a restaurant’s customer base. “No business wants to be told they can no longer accommodate 25 percent of their potential customer base,” he says.

Yet even restaurants that don’t operate under a public-smoking ban may alienate the other 75 percent if they fail to improve their indoor-air quality. “Customers should be the driving force behind the scenes and vitality of each and every restaurant—not bureaucratic mandates,” says Steven Grover, vice president of the National Restaurant Association’s Health and Safety Regulatory Affairs Department.

Clearing the Air: Some Restaurants Choose to Go Smoke-Free

Some operators are freely choosing a smoke-free environment. A quick Internet search shows that hundreds of restaurants around the nation have self-imposed smoking bans. These operators reason that the improved air quality enhances their patrons’ dining experience and outweighs the loss of smoking customers.

“Back in 1994, we made a change in our menu. As we made the changes to serve fresher ingredients and get away from just pizza and subs, the smoke was conflicting with the freshness of the foods,” says Bill Seras, who owns the Back Door Cafe in Carlisle, Pa. The Back Door Cafe is a member of the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Pennsylvania, an organization that combats tobacco use in the Keystone State.

Seras banned smoking in his restaurant in 1994 after accommodating smokers for eight years. He says he did it to attract more families and to provide a more pleasant dining experience in a setting where the tables are close together. “I remember one or two tables had to get up and leave because of the smoke,” says Seras. “That’s when I knew we had to change.”

Seras says that going smoke-free has helped improve business by attracting more families and nonsmokers. Smoking customers can light up outside on the patio, he says. “We probably lost some customers, but overall it has worked out well for us,” he says.

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Ira Apfel is assistant editor for Restaurants USA.