Jump to full article: Convenience Store News, 2009-11-22
Intro: Cigarette sales decreases are hurting small stores in Florida and sending smokers to nearby Georgia to avoid the state's new $1-a-pack cigarette tax, according to James E. Smith, spokesman and lobbyist for the Florida Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association.
Smith told the Web site, TampaBay.com, tobacco products -- mainly cigarettes -- trigger convenience store visits that account for 34 percent of in-store sales of items such as snacks, drinks and bread.
"Any time you reduce sales by big percentages, you eliminate a significant portion of profit that retailers use for things like payroll and rent," Smith said. "If you're a customer and you're not going in for cigarettes, you're not going to go in at all. And a lot of sales at convenience stores are impulse buys. That cuts into the bottom line."
Some North Florida cigarette buyers may simply drive across the state line. Smith said his counterpart in Georgia is boasting of a nearly fivefold increase in overall sales in some stores along the border with Florida.
According to the Web site, cigarettes sales are down 27 percent in Florida during the past four months. However
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