Famous Smoke Shop Gets Set to Open

Famous Smoke Shop, based in Forks Township and getting ready to move into a facility that will include a restaurant, supplies cigar aficionados across the country with cigars, humidors and accessories. The company maintains a retail operation locally and reaches out to cigar lovers everywhere through catalogs, several Internet sites and social media.

“We’re not only moving, we’re undertaking a major expansion,” said Jeff Brown, who is coordinating much of the move. He will be managing the new retail facility and restaurant.

 The Famous operation and retail shop is now at 1100 Conroy Place. Some 80 people are employed there. That number is expected to rise to around 100 in the new facilities. Final construction and installation of systems and equipment is under way in the new building about a mile away at 90 Mort Drive, also in Forks.

 “The retail shop here will be closed during the move,” Brown added. Closing date is Friday, June 24, with reopening set for about a week or 10 days later.

 The company maintains a huge inventory of cigars. Millions are stacked floor to ceiling in the climate-controlled humidor room. It’s more than a room—it’s 24,000 square feet with ceilings 24 feet high (the climate-controlled humidor room at the new facility is four times larger, Brown said). Forklifts cruise the aisles. Many cigars—especially the premium brands—arrive shipped in the familiar wooden boxes. Others come in bulk for repackaging at Famous.

Brown frequently flies off to the Dominican Republic, Honduras and other countries where cigars are produced. There, he meets with cigar makers big and small to arrange imports of a very large range of fine cigars—all rolled by hand.

All this means paying close attention to proper storage. 

 “We needed to get the right humidity and air conditioning in the new facility before the move,” Brown said. These affect the quality and shelf life of cigars, and both are critical to the storage of the extensive inventory of more than 300 brands carried by Famous.

The company will be offering more than cigars in the new facility.

 “We’re putting in a state-of-the-art kitchen,” he said. It will support the new restaurant and lounge. “Fine dining and events for cigar lovers are planned after we get in and settled. The focus will be a varied menu with fresh foods grown locally.”

Famous Smoke Shop has a long history. It was founded by Dave and Rose Zaretsky in 1939 with a store on Broadway in Manhattan. Son Arthur Zaretsky took over the business in 1984, and in 2000 he expanded and moved the operation to Forks. Now the company is expanding again.

Brown has little time right now for golf, his favorite pastime. For at least the next several weeks or so, every minute will be focused on getting the new retail and restaurant facilities ready. Then comes the actual move. With 80 people and all those millions of cigars, it will be quite an undertaking, but an ongoing business cannot afford interruptions in service to their customers.