Nine mile bar, economic impact story

Hey Greg - It's been a busy morning. I got this story this morning...Kathy called me. Can we post?

Thanks
Sheila

----- Original Message -----
From: Sheila Kromer
To: sheiladk@comcast.net
Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 8:43 AM
Subject: Nine Mile Bar Story
Nine Mile Bar is located in Grand Rapids, MN. It was established in 1893 and the current owner (Kathy) is a third generation bar owner. Since the smoking ban was enacted her profits have been cut in half (~30,000 down to ~15,000). She has had to cut hours of employees and lay some off. Her one employee of 28 years was cut from 26 hours to 10 hours a week. Her cook went from 4 days a week down to 2 days a week. She had to lay off both of her waitresses and now has no waitresses. She also laid off her janitor. Her 70 year old mom and 16 year old son volunteer to help...they work for tips only.

One of her distributors (Dick Distributing-Bud) said that liquor sales to bars are down 50% in the area but that the White Oak Casino (Deer River) has tripled their liquor sales since Oct. 1. The Coke & Pepsi sales reps no longer come around because they got laid off...all Kathy' s orders must be phoned in now. Another one of Kathy's distributors (Miller rep) said they used to have 2 trucks each carrying 700 cases a beer deliver to the area pre-ban and now they only have 1 truck carrying 100-200 cases of beer.

In Kathy's words, "I have been around a long time but I have never seen anything like this".