Smoke-free restaurants honored

Some Sedalia restaurant owners have a message for diners: “Leave the cigarettes at home.”

The owners of Renee’s North 65 Cafe, Walz Country Cooking Cafe and Cugino’s Pizzeria have banned cigarettes and their smoke from their dining rooms.

Amy Luvin, co-chairwoman of the Tobacco Use Prevention Coalition, gave each restaurant a certificate on Thursday to commemorate their smokefree status. Luvin said the recognition is for setting a health standard for diners and the community. The efforts to persuade restaurants to ban smoking is part of a movement to make Sedalia a Blue Ribbon community, said Luvin, a registered nurse with the Pettis County Health Center.

Joyce Wolf, 58, of Sedalia, said she appreciates having a smoke-free dining room at Karen Walz’s restaurant. Wolf has asthma, and said cigarette smoke bothers her at some restaurants.

She eats at Walz’s restaurant, at 23375 U.S. Highway 65, almost every morning. “At some places, the smoking and no-smoking (areas) are just a table apart,” Wolf said.

Walz said the cafe has been smoke-free since a few months after it opened in 1994. The dining room is too small for a separate smoking section, she said.

At Renee’s North 65 Cafe, Betty Simmons, the property owner, and her son, Ronnie Simmons, the business owner, said they wanted a healthier business.

“It’s better for your health, makes your place cleaner, makes your food taste better,” Ronnie Simmons said of the no-smoking cafe at 22938 U.S. Highway 65.

His brother nearly died from smoking-related health problems. “It destroys you,” Simmons said. “Plus it’s hard on other people. Second-hand smoke isn’t good.”

He thinks the policy will have a positive impact on the business, which opened about four weeks ago.

“We’ve had a lot of people bragging because it’s smokefree,” said Betty Simmons.

Harry Donnellan, 44, of Houstonia, was eating a pork tenderloin sandwich at the cafe on Thursday.

Donnellan, a smoker, said he was a little disappointed to find the restaurant was entirely no-smoking, but “it’s nothing I can’t put up with.”

“I’m a firm believer that if an owner — not the government — says no smoking, that’s their prerogative,” Donnellan said. “I don’t want the government telling me that I can’t smoke.”

Scott Pierson, owner of Cugino’s Pizzeria, said he decided to go smoke-free about a month after opening, because of customer complaints.

“I just said you can go outside and smoke,” he said. The restaurant has an outdoor table with an ashtray for smokers.

He has seen no impact on his business because of the policy, although he gets some complaints from smokers.

Sarah Uptergrove, of Tipton, who was eating lunch at Cugino’s, at 1430 Thompson Blvd., doesn’t mind abstaining from her cigarettes during the meal.

“I don’t smoke in my house, and I don’t smoke in my car ’cause it stinks,” she said.

Meg Marshall, of Sedalia, who quit smoking, said she appreciates the smoke-free dining.

“I’ve been places where (cigarette smoke is) like blowing along everywhere,” she said.

omalley@sedaliademocrat.com