Thursday, November 15, 2001
Restaurant Owner Says Smoke-Free Eatery Better For Customers, Workers
By MILTON VALENCIA Times staff reporter
CENTRAL FALLS – After 30 years on the job that has
become part of her life, Jackie Mulrooney has to learn the trade a new way.
The 64-year-old waitress at Stanley's Restaurant has to deliver the orders of hamburgers,large fries and sodas all without smoking a cigarette. "It's a good thing," she said, while chewing on a plastic straw to calm her cravings. "It's a good thing for the customers and the help."
Stanley's Restaurant, at 535 Dexter Street - a traditional-type hamburger diner where the waitress knows all the customers' names and their regular orders - has joined the trend for public health and has become smoke-free.
"It's a small place, so it just subjects everyone to smoke," said Greg Raheb, who has owned restaurant, near the U.S. post office, for the last 14 years. He bought it off the Kryla family of Cumberland, who first started cooking burgers on the grill in 1932. Raheb, 39, said he first considered banning smoking a few years ago, when his workers complained they were delivering food through smoke clouds.
“You hate to rock the boat and get people upset,” he said of his regular, smoking customers, but he looked into it anyway.
According to his research, waiters and waitresses were diagnosed with lung cancer four times greater than people in other fields and were diagnosed with heart disease twice as often as people in other careers. “Over the years it’s not healthy for them,” Raheb said. When I read that, I said to myself, it’s my responsibility as the employer.”
Last summer he conducted a survey of his customers and says 90 percent of them said they would return as often or more frequently if the restaurant was smoke-free.“That included smokers,” he said. “So that was the ring to go ahead with it, to take the plunge.”
Effective November 1, the establishment is now smoke-free, with a massive “Smoke-Free” banner hanging from the storefront, and small red “Thank you for not smoking” signs posted at each booth. Mulrooney, who has spent nearly half her life working at the historic restaurant, says she doesn’t mind, but rather approves. And Raheb says most customers told him they had no problem stepping outside for a five-minute cigarette break.
In fact, he says he has seen “new faces” ordering chicken tenders and onion rings from Stanley’s “smoke-free” restaurant.
