WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARS
Heights Cigar Lounge reopens — with sophistication and comfortable distance.
“I’m not presently concerned about making rent, but six weeks from now, that may be a different story.” Paul Carroll, Heights Cigar Lounge
The way Heights Cigar Lounge owner Paul Carroll sees it, he and his three employees were already walking the fine line between keeping his steady batch of regular customers safe from potential infection while maintaining a comfortable and intimate environment before COVID-19 forced retailers like him to temporarily close in mid-March.
Having already marked off certain chairs with placards in the 1,000-square-foot lounge section of his 2,500-square-foot space to ensure at least 6 feet of social distancing before the March 16 closure, Carroll has instituted additional measures since reopening the lounge section on May 1. Those include maintaining a nine-person limit in the lounge; only allowing one person at a time in the store’s 400-square-foot humidor; mandating that all customers either wash their hands or use hand sanitizer before entering the humidor; ensuring no physical contact between customers and employees; requiring employees to wear masks; and encouraging customers to wear masks when not smoking.
“I’m seeing statistics that 50 percent of small businesses will close because of the pandemic, and another third will close after that,” said Carroll. “I’m just doing what I can so that I’m not one of those casualties.”
Since fully reopening on May 1 with slightly reduced hours (10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and noon to 6 p.m. on Sundays), Heights Cigar Lounge has seen about a 40 percent drop in sales-per-hour from pre-COVID-19 levels, though the average sale is up about 35 percent as retail customers appear to be stocking up a little more. And while the store’s efforts to enforce social distancing were met with some resistance from customers before the temporary closure, customers are now far more compliant.
“Ninety-five percent of those walking in for retail are wearing masks,” Carroll said. “Those who come in to smoke suspend their mask usage while smoking, and return to use them on their way out.”
Still, the pandemic has put a damper on what Carroll said was gearing up to be a banner year for the 10-year-old establishment, which also rents out 14-by-14-inch lockers to cigar aficionados for $300 a year (the lounge stopped collecting on those charges when it was closed).
After years of gaining a steady following — about half of the store’s customers are repeat customers and more than 10 percent of its customers come in at least weekly — and broadening its inventory to more than 300 types of cigars, Heights Cigar Lounge boosted its annual revenue to a record $567,000 in 2018 and matched that last year.
The store was on pace to increase revenue another 6 percent in 2020 before COVID-19 struck, according to Carroll, who said that during special events such as the area’s annual White Linen Night in the Heights arts and entertainment festival each summer, he’d get as many as 30 people in the humidor.
“The place is really nice,” said Edwin Smith, a Jersey Village resident who began frequenting the store several times a week about five years ago. “It looks more like a man cave and it’s quiet enough for people to have a conversation.”
Having shuttered for a week in March — Carroll hasn’t laid off any employees and kept them busy by having them work on a new website from home — the store reopened only for retail sales for five hours a day. Employees unlocked the front door to allow one customer at a time to buy product during that time.
“The closure was more dramatic than the reopening, mostly because of our efforts to remain open for curbside during the pandemic,” said Carroll. “We were the only ones touching anything.”
The store keeps its cigars in “optimal conditions,” which Carroll says is at 70 degrees Fahrenheit with 70 percent humidity to store them “for decades” without losing flavor.
He also said that getting product, which comes from the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Nicaragua, hasn’t been an issue yet. While shipments from the Dominican and Honduras have stopped, Carroll’s purveyors in Florida keep as much as six months of inventory in their warehouses.
Meantime, Smith vouches that Carroll and his employees have been diligent about wearing masks, and wiping chairs and surfaces down with disinfectant after usage. It’s all part of a riskmitigation effort that Carroll said he practices on all facets of the business and hopes will ensure the lounge’s future.
“I’m a miser, and I’ve held money in reserves. It’s a trick I learned from corporate America,” said Carroll, who was a longtime business systems analyst before opening his store. “I’m not presently concerned about making rent, but six weeks from now, that may be a different story.”