Cigarette Stores, Las Vegas Sun, Aug. 20, 1996

Chain store’s cigarettes 100% guilt-free Lisa Sciortino Tuesday, Aug. 20, 1996 | 11:59 a.m. It's a smoker's paradise. Shelf after shelf of neatly displayed cigarette cartons -- in every brand imaginable. Marlboro menthols? Got 'em. Dunhills? Yup. Tareyton 100's? Right here. And the prices are good, too. A carton of Marlboro flip-top boxes is $15.49 ($1.79 a pack). Welcome to the Cigarettes Cheaper! store on South Decatur Boulevard, one of 10 that have opened around the valley since May. Look for 30 more in the coming months. As of last week, the chain had 320 stores in its ever-expanding eight-state region. At its current pace, 10 new Cigarettes Cheaper! stores open each week. This at a time when consumers are being bombarded with messages about the dangers of smoking. So what does John Roscoe, founder and vice president of Cigarettes Cheaper!, make of all this? Money -- and lots of it. Same way he's done it with his Northern California-based, family-owned chain of Cheaper! discount minimarts. "We keep it simple," he says. Roscoe expects $150 to $200 million in sales this year, a sizable chunk of the $65 billion in cigarettes sold annually in the United States. By the time the 500th Cigarettes Cheaper! store opens this year, the company will account for about 2 percent of the nation's sales. The secret of Roscoe's success: Give badgered smokers a place to purchase their cigarettes in peace. "One out of four adults smoke. Apparently it is an attractive choice for more and more people," he says. "More people smoke than voted for Clinton in the '92 election, yet everybody thinks that smokers can be abused. You wouldn't treat women, Hispanics, blacks, anyone else this way, but everyone thinks it's fair game to abuse smokers ... make them stand out in the rain and smoke ... and to tell them they're guilty of ruining everybody else's lives." No guilt to be had in these stores, staffed by "nice people who treat customers with dignity and respect," he says. Besides, "It's not a problem for people who don't smoke because they never have to enter our stores." John Meyers, manager of the Decatur store, says the feedback has been positive. "We want our customers to be treated like customers, instead of having to ask somebody to go behind (the counter) to get cigarettes or get dirty looks in lines," he says. "They appreciate the kind of store that it is, the fact that they can walk into a store that shows them the same kind of respect any customer would get walking into any other store that sells CDs, clothes or anything else." Working at the store is a plus for Meyers, too, as he is allowed to partake while on the job. Not that the company encourages smoking. It offers bonuses to stores with nonsmoking employees. "That's just something we've always done, but if they want to smoke that's their option," he says. As for Roscoe, he's chosen not to smoke, no matter how good profits are. "It's a matter of how you decide you want to live." archive