Wetherspoon pub bans smoking outside
Saturday, August 30, 2014 at 15:28 To the best of my knowledge JD Wetherspoon was the first pub chain to ban smoking.
In May 2005 the company announced that 60 of its 650 pubs were to go smoke free with the rest falling in line by May 2006.
This decision was later rescinded owing to falling profits (JD Wetherspoon ends no-smoking trial). At the time however chairman Tim Martin said:
"Half of smokers want to give up and 25% of people smoke and they'll still be able to smoke in our beer gardens, albeit not an enticing prospect in the middle of January and February."
Ironically, the company's smoking policy was taken out of its hands when the Government introduced a comprehensive smoking ban in 2007.
Now the days when smokers can light up in the company's beer gardens may be numbered too. Last night I received an email from a smoker who reported:
This evening I visited a pub which belongs to Wetherspoon. I went outside for a smoke only to find no smoking signs in the front and rear grounds. When I questioned this I was informed that they were complying with the law that said 70 per cent of outdoor space must be for non smokers.
Is this right? I have never come across this before and feel that once again the smoker is being made to feel less than welcome. I will never visit this establishment again but wonder if indeed this is law.
Unless I've missed something the law says no such thing but it wouldn't surprise me if an outdoor smoking ban was on the company's agenda. In 2005 Tim Martin told the BBC:
"An increasing percentage of the population are giving up smoking and a significant number of people are staying away from pubs and restaurants because they are too smoky."
See Wetherspoon pubs ban smoking (BBC News).
Perhaps he feels the time is now right "to go one step further" and ban smoking in beer gardens.
I haven't revealed the name of the pub or its location because I want to check the facts with Wetherspoon on Monday. I'll let you know what, if anything, they have to say on the matter.
Update: Report concerning a different Wetherspoon pub – Customers criticise Stevenage pub’s outdoor smoking ban (May 2014).
Meanwhile it seems the company isn't too keen on the use of e-cigarettes either:
Eddie Gershon a spokesman for Wetherspoons, said: “Wetherspoons for the past four years has not allowed e-cigarettes in its pubs for the simple reason that, in a very busy pub, it’s very hard for staff to distinguish between an e-cigarette and a lit cigarette.”
Reader Comments (13)
The only sign in simple english on the OUTSIIDE steps to a Wetherspoons pub in North Wales is (SMOKING IS NOT PERMITTED ON THESE STEPS)
All other signs are Welsh/English, even the burger and fries
Pathetic
Wetherspoons are about to open in my town. They've lost a customer already (and I don't smoke).
Welcome toYawnsville!
I really don’t think the smoking fraternity will give two hoots in hell that the spine snappingly politically correct Tim Martin has issued an edict about outside smoking being banned. I wouldn’t want to drink in any pub owned by a monumental bollock-head who looks like he spends more time rinsing his luscious locks in ladyman shampoo and asking himself if his bum looks big in whatever his bum looks big in.
Any outside area is not covered by the smoking ban, so I don’t know where he gets that bilge-pump drivel from. He’s basically saying “Hey, I’m right on with my anti-smoking message…and I’m pushing all the right buttons…”
I hope he doesn’t tilt that pudding head of his forwards – or he’ll lose what few marbles he has left. If he wants to ban anything, then what better example can be set than banning his toilet chain of misery gut pubs.
A very large and depressingly tiresome tit!
Don’t you mince your words, now Dennis! You tell it like it is! ;)
Seriously, though, it’s one of the (oh so many) unintended downsides to the smoking ban that companies across the country who want to “go further” than the specific requirements of the Health Act (which make it very clear that the regulations only apply to “enclosed” areas), but don’t want to admit to being the rabid, intolerant, puritan anti-smokers that they really are, try to hide behind “the law” and hope that the majority of people will assume that the pubs must know the law better than they do and that therefore that’s what the law states. Hence the e-mail from your correspondent, Simon. I do hope that you have disabused him of his misconceptions!
Shortly after the ban came in, I was having a conversation with a friend in the building trade who said that in July 2007 his boss told all of the guys on the site that they weren’t allowed to smoke at work any more because “smoking is illegal in all workplaces now.” This wasn’t under certain circumstances, like working with open pipework or flammable materials, you understand – it was an all-encompassing, blanket ban across all and every site. I swiftly enlightened him, of course, and said that if his boss wanted to ban smokers from smoking at work then he was perfectly entitled to do so, of course, but he wasn’t entitled to try and pretend that he “had” to do it. That was just the cowardly action of someone who wanted to bring in a rule, but didn’t want to take the flak which resulted from it.
There are far too many poor managers in this country who have a tendency to make petty rules and regulations of their own but can’t justify them with good reasons (because often there are no good reasons), and the smoking ban has given them a wonderful tool to use in continuing such poor management tactics in terms of dealing with their staff – something which they are usually spectacularly bad at anyway. No wonder the country’s in such a mess when our legislators keep passing laws which are so helpful to petty-minded, hopeless managers.
"Tim" will have been advised by his publicists that his 'public announcement' will bring in about a two percent increase in customers. If it does not, then nothing is lost.
Who cares? I don't. Does anyone give a damn? Why should they, unless they are shareholders in Wetherspoons?
But this is precisely what we have been saying for years - let Wetherspoons decide. Is it possible that Wetherspoons is playing the long game by 'upping the anti' and provoking a response?
Sometimes, the best way to overturn a lousy idea is to take it to its logical extreme. Maybe Wetherspoon is doing just that.
On a brighter note , I went to a two hour smoke in , in a pub over the bank holiday. It was great to see the ash trays come out and it felt like bieng in a real pub. Not a single person eating food.
Fantastic.
Wetherspoons are still no doubt millions of pounds down on the profits that they could be making if they accommodated everyone inside, smokers and non smokers. Forget UK pubs, spend your money abroad where smokers are made welcome and accommodated inside instead.
Wetherspoons are the only real losers here.
Reminder
Wetherspoons has BENEFITTED from the ban
Their central locations have seen much of their competition gone to the wall with the subsequent drift of customer base drifting to
the fewer remaining venues ,the cheapest being Wetherspoons.
Worse still Wetherspoons would spend millions lobbyiing against any mention of relaxing the ban in non food,no children venues.
When somebody is dead set on destroying their business well then Let em.
We all saw what happened to Revel Casino In Atlantic City.
Of course smoking bans don't hurt business.
"Its original owners envisioned it as a luxury resort that just happened to have a casino, and eschewed many staples of casino culture, including a buffet and bus trips for day-trippers. But that strategy - as well as the only overall smoking ban in Atlantic City - turned off customers, and Revel filed for bankruptcy in 2013, a little over a year after opening."
Todays headlines and they outlawed smoking on the Beach and the Boardwalk.......... New Jersey home of RWJF likely behind it all!
Atlantic City to close two casinos, lose 5,000 jobs over three days
New York Daily News · 15 hours ago
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — A time few could imagine during the glory days of casino gambling has arrived in Atlantic City, where two casinos and more
Re Misty's comment about the incompetent using The Law (wrongly) a few years ago I went into a local library, which had just been refurbished, and remarked on the lack of books, which were arranged in a circular unit that was small relative to the space around it. The library assistant informed me that no more books could be accommodated because The Law said that if browsers were bending down they shouldn't run the danger of bumping arses (words to that effect)! Absolute bollocks, of course, there is no such law and, on questioning, just guidelines to the effect that adequate room should be left etc etc
Also went to the opticians looking to replace contact lenses which they refused to do without a test "The Law says we can't .." Again, bollocks - just scared of being sued without a defence - but, there again, the mindless compo drones have brought us to this.
Weatherspoons have bought up a load of closed down pubs that were going for a song in Ireland.
The bastards must realised that they cant go wrong in a country thats so up its own ass in regard to anti smoking as Hitler himself.
Oh dear, why do all these smokers get their tar stained pants in a twist over what Weatherspoons do about smoking? If you don't like the policy don't go there. Simple really.
We haven't been going to anti-social pubs like Wetherspoons since before 2007 or since - in case you hadn't noticed hundreds of pubs have since closed down due to lost support from tobacco consumers.
It's a good job really because worse than not going out to the pub is going out and having to stand at the bar listening to a smokerphobic tosser like you McNair.
You must seek mental health treatment for the good of yourself and society around you. After all, smokerphobia not only harms others with anti-social and abusive behaviour - but it also damages your own health by giving you imaginary illnesses and a superiority/God Complex.