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TOBACCO BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
Aromas in Jacksonville, Florida stakes its claim as the largest smoking lounge south
of Philadelphia. Here’s how it went beyond selling stogies to old fogies, capturing
a “premier nightlife” personality.
I
f you take away only one thing
after visiting Aromas cigar lounge
in Jacksonville, Florida, it will be
this: the cigar lifestyle is alive and well
with young adults/the young at heart in
northern Florida.
“This is not your father’s cigar bar,”
Aromas Cigars, Wine & Martini Bar
proudly bellows on its website. In business
since 2003, expanding with a liquor license
in 2006, and doubling its square footage to
4,800 in 2008,Aromas flags its place on the
stogie map as “the largest cigar bar in the
southern United States,”meaning south of
Philadelphia, according to Marshall Gray,
retail manager.
While its size is impressive, that is
secondary to its constantly evolving
effort to “stay ahead of the cigar curve,”
as Gray puts it, and to keep a new cigar
generation on its toes,literally (there is now
a dance floor at Aromas, one of the many
experiences it offers customers).
When it opened in 2003, Aromas only
offered beer and wine and the crowd was
older, with a lot of “power smoking” going
on, according to Gray.Then, after it got its
liquor license and could take over the entire
building in an upscale retail shopping plaza
in southside Jacksonville, “We could see
the crowd getting younger and it evolved
more into selling a cigar lifestyle and cigar-
related experiences,”he explains.
So Aromas Cigars,Wine &Martini Bar
is now a culmination of multiple distinct
operations and experiences, all working in
unison to bring the customer the ultimate
in what it calls the “tobacciana lifestyle.”
Catering to a New
Cigar Generation
By Renée Covino