Stanley Pappas, a 30-year cigar industry veteran, has watched customers from all walks of life settle in for a smoke at his two stores: in Greenwood Village and Stanley Pappas DTC in Denver.
Retirees arrive in the mornings to socialize, puffing on cigars with their cups of coffee. Millionaires chat with recent college graduates, while Democrats and Republicans smoke side-by-side. Industry professionals meet and do business over stogies. While “we see all these divisions in society,” people of every ethnicity, political persuasion, sexuality and gender often set their differences aside to enjoy life’s finer things in cigar lounges, Pappas said.
“I sit there and look and, sometimes, I say, ‘God, I love my job,’ because I see all of this interaction,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s a genteel type of industry where people have respect for each other.”
In a market where tobacco chain retailers continue their spread, Pappas’ two stores are among a handful of specialized cigar shops and lounges nestled in the Denver area. Many of these businesses have had to weather the tides of public opinion around smoking, along with state-mandated closures during the coronavirus pandemic. They’ve come to rely on their loyal customers — but they still see fresh, curious faces walk through their doors.
“There are always newcomers,” Pappas said. “There’s a nostalgia that their grandfathers smoked cigars.”
To Pappas, cigarettes and vaping don’t compare to the cigar industry, which he called “a cultural thing for over 100 years.” American consumers smoked around 300 million cigars by the mid-19th century, according to TIME Magazine, with famous figures, such as Ulysses S. Grant, smoking stogies.
Because of that, “it’s a struggle constantly to educate those who legislate us because they don’t understand,” he said. The state’s on tobacco products, which was enacted in 1986, expanded in both 2004 and 2020, the Colorado General Assembly reports. It consists of three components, “which in practice are collected as a single 50 percent tax.”
Historically, the U.S. cigar industry has embraced its highs and survived its lows. A sales spike in the 1920s led to a dip into the late 1950s, the Cigar Association of America Inc. The 1960s and early 1970s saw another jump, followed by a slump into the early 1990s. In 1996, the industry welcomed another positive shift, with cigar sales soaring into 2012. After several more downturns and upswings, the latter half of 2020 showed signs of a “strong comeback,” according to the trade association.
“The ebb and flow of the cigar industry is there’s peaks and valleys,” Pappas said.
His career began with the launch of his own cigar brand in the early 1990s. Two years of creating his blend through a Dominican connection led to the purchase of 1,000 cigars, he said. After a graphic designer helped with Pappas’ bands and boxes, he introduced the cigars to his friends in a Las Vegas restaurant’s cigar room.
“Basically, everybody loved them,” Pappas said. “They talked to the owner and said, ‘Hey Andre, would you sell these here?’ He said, ‘Absolutely, these are fabulous cigars.’ And the company was born.”
His claim as “the only Greek cigar manufacturer in the world” at the time resulted in “a great grassroots market,” Pappas added. He went on to open his first store in 2002, providing his staff with proper cigar educations.
While the pandemic left him questioning whether his stores would shutter permanently, customers returned, and business is stabilizing. Looking forward, Pappas described his outlook as “optimistically cautious.”
Nick Moschetti, general manager of the Brown Palace Hotel and Spa in Denver, acknowledges that “we’ve lost some cigar shops in the Denver metro area over the last couple years,” but he considers these individual cases, some of which are COVID-related.
For instance, Denver’s Capitol Cigars announced a Jan. 29 to keep its business afloat. “It has struggled to stay open through COVID and beyond,” the Facebook event details. “They have experience hardships like many small businesses.” The team at Capitol Cigars didn’t respond to multiple requests for further comment.
Moschetti’s 130-year-old hotel is home to Churchill Bar, a cigar lounge established in 1996 that sells memberships – and is currently at capacity, with a lengthening waitlist. On top of the lounge’s loyal member base, he’s noticed more interest from younger demographics and women.
“What we see here at Churchill is a growing market of folks who are interested in a full-service cigar lounge,” he added in a phone interview.
The pandemic forced the hotel’s doors to shutter in 2020 for the first time in its history, but Churchill enthusiasts were impatient to puff on stogies while sipping the bar’s Midnight Cowboys or munching on their BBQ brisket bao buns. “Even during our periods of closure, I would get calls from members daily asking if they could come in,” Moschetti said, adding that, upon re-opening, 2021 resulted in a “near-record year.”
Moschetti doesn’t anticipate many new competitors in the Denver market, partly because of the Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act passed in 2006, which banned smoking in indoor areas. “We’re grandfathered in,” he explained.
Moschetti’s predicted outlook for this year has him “very excited and encouraged,” he said, estimating an upsurge in travel.
Perrie Morgan, a tobacconist at Bar Las Palmas in Denver, enjoys being a woman in the “male-dominated” cigar industry. Owner Clay Carlton, who she called “basically a legend,” taught her to handmake cigars about six years ago, and she’s been hooked ever since.
“There are some guys that come in here that think they know everything. So, they look at me, and they’re like, ‘Oh, she probably doesn’t know anything,’ ” Morgan said in a phone interview. “However, little do they know that I make cigars.”
She described the pandemic as “pretty rough” for the cigar shop and bar. However, regulars kept the business alive, Morgan said. “We’re just grateful that we did make it.”
With its downtown location, Bar Las Palmas has since recovered and is now thriving, she said. “We have been so busy,” Morgan said. “We’re not going anywhere.”
