Ben:

Before I became a tobacconist, I was enveloped by the coffee industry. I have always been a charismatic individual with a refined palate. I thought the coffee industry was a good mesh between the social aspect of getting to know the regular patrons and relying on my palate to make the most of their experience. After entering the cigar industry as a beardless, part-time tobacconist for another local shop, my eyes were opened to a whole new sub-culture I never knew existed. I witnessed a community brought together by a pile of dried up leaves that transcended barriers of class, gender, race, and age; barriers that are far too often wedges in today’s world. It didn’t take long before I was welcomed into this handmade community, and I knew there was no turning back.

Over the years, I watched this cigar family continue their rituals of trying to find a lounge to cram in to or a backyard or park to get together at and enjoy the company of fellow brothers and sisters of the leaf. The community was strong but there wasn’t a place that could welcome everyone at any time. My wife and I dreamed of how we could tap into the pulse of the cigar industry and provide a place to allow this community to thrive in.

This dream wasn’t made possible until I met David Swinburne, or Swinny, as most people call him. I remember he drifted from store to store, but his frequency at the store I was then managing steadily increased. He gave me weird requests for special orders, and I fulfilled them. Little did I know, he was only testing me, because he too had a similar dream.

One afternoon, Swinny asked me to meet him later in the week for brunch and I obliged. When I was approaching his table there was no formal greeting, only a question, “I want to open a cigar lounge. Are you in?”

We hit the ground running with our first and foremost objective being ‘everyone is equal’. We wanted to provide a place where this cigar culture could flourish organically – and it did. A lot of people give me the credit for the eclectic crowd we host day in and day out, but I take zero credit for that. This community has been around since the birth of cigars. There’s something powerful when people come together to ‘Put Some Smoke In The Air’… all we did was provide a place for that to happen.