As more tobacco companies are charging retailers for tobacco merchandising displays, Pan-Oston, an expert retail manufacturing company, releases its full line of customizable tobacco merchandising equipment for convenience stores. Although strict FDA regulations on tobacco packaging and labeling make it difficult to advertise the product in stores, Pan-Oston’s merchandising can help make sure the tobacco…
Building New Tobacco Sales
Retailers and government officials butt heads over handmade cigarettes. By Pat Pape, Contributing Editor Celeste Lucas likes to smoke, but she doesn’t like paying $5 a pack for cigarettes, so she took matters into her own hands and purchased a roll-your-own cigarette machine. Using loose tobacco and paper tubes, she can now create an entire…
New York RYO Business Shut Down
Giving customers access to tobacco and RYO machines is akin to selling untaxed cigarettes, lawsuit insists. Two New York-based roll-your-own tobacco stores run by Island Smokes—one in Chinatown and one in Staten Island—have agreed to close their doors by Feb. 1, following a lawsuit settlement, according to city officials, the New York Post reported. Island…
Smoker Friendly Signs New Locations
Smoker Friendly International has signed nine new locations, working with Harold Levinson Associates (HLA) sales team. The independent stores are tobacco customers of HLA, and have decided to license with Smoker Friendly International as authorized dealers to have an exclusive private label program for each of their stores. The stores are located in northern New…
Wawa’s Cigar Sales Flourish With Middleton Partnership
“John Middleton has some very strong sellers in our stores, but the new merchandiser they developed with us has been an overall improvement to the [cigar] category.” John Middleton Inc. has been operating in the Philadelphia area since 1856, beginning with a retail tobacco shop. More than a hundred years later, John Middleton divested its…