Pasco cigar store has a business plan to savor

Lou Search bought his favorite cigar shop and, with his wife, Dotty, has run the Tobacco Hut for two decades.

By JODIE TILLMAN, Times Staff Writer
Published January 12, 2008

Jehu Ross picks cigars in the Tobacco Hut's walk-in humidor. The shop sells 150 brands of cigars.
	[Brendan Fitterer | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Brendan Fitterer | Times] Lou and Dotty Search have brought the Tobacco Hut from a sparse store with little more than a counter to a smoke shop with a dedicated clientele.

NEW PORT RICHEY -- Entrepreneurs often start with a problem and an idea for solving it.

Here was Lou Search's problem: His favorite cigar store was about to close. His idea of how to solve it: Buy the shop.

Search, then nearly 60 years old and running a pressure cleaning business, didn't know much about tobacco.

"The only thing I knew," he said, "was that I liked cigars."

Wife Dotty had mixed feelings. "I was scared to death," she said. "But he'd never taken me wrong before."

That was 23 years ago. Today, the couple is still operating the Tobacco Hut, a tiny but popular cigar and tobacco shop in the Elfers Square strip mall.

Dotty, now 74, works the morning shift. Lou, 80, works afternoons. It's just the two of them, neither with plans to quit any time soon.

Lou likes to say he'll retire "when Tom Dobies comes and gets me and carts me out." (Dobies is an undertaker. And a customer.)

Tobacco Hut sells pipes, 150 different kinds of cigars and specially blended tobacco. It has three reach-in humidors and one walk-in, which Lou built. It has handwritten signs, wood-paneled walls and, on lucky days in the right season, a box of free Meyer lemons from the Searches' yard.

Connoisseurs appreciate one unusual feature of the Tobacco Hut: The Searches blend their own pipe tobacco, which means it can be better calibrated to customers' tastes than the preblended varieties.

They also appreciate a Friday night tradition: Lou pulls out some extra folding chairs and puts on a pot of coffee and in come the cops and lawyers and business types for a smoke and gab session.

"Of course," said Lou, "we solve the world's problems."

Lou and Dotty are Ohio natives, with two children, three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

He's a storyteller, his anecdotes told in a haze of cigar smoke and with a, "Now, you shouldn't put this one in the paper."

She's a bit more reserved and, for five years counting, a nonsmoker. She supplies a good-natured, bemused commentary about things. ("The girls at the bank tell me even my money smells like smoke," she said with a laugh.)

They are deferential to one another. He interrupts her by accident and quickly says "I'm sorry. Go ahead." She smiles and continues.

So how did the pair learn how to run a tobacco shop? They asked a lot of questions, of the sales representatives and their pipe repairman. They became students of their trade.

"I got real interested in it," said Lou, "because I wanted to make a go of it."

It wasn't easy. The shop required a lot of work because the previous owner had left very little inventory and had no humidors.

"He had an L-shaped counter, and that was it," said Lou.

"No register," said Dotty.

Up until 10 years ago, Lou kept his pressure washing business, which meant Dotty more often ran the shop.

Initially, they didn't have a lot of customers, and she got so bored she started sewing, knitting and crocheting at the counter. She put a few of her pieces near the window and sold them to women who happened by.

But as word spread, the couple's business has kept slowly growing. Now they estimate they have at least 1,200 customers. Some of them come as often as three times a week and a few volunteered to run the store when the Searches get away for an occasional gambling trip to Biloxi.

The tobacco shop has given them a small but steady income, though the economy last year hurt their sales. Still, the Searches say they dodged a bigger bullet when President Bush vetoed a tobacco tax that would have raised the average cost of a cigar by at least $3. (The higher tax was intended to help pay for the expansion of children's health insurance program.)

"That would have put us out of business," said Lou Search.

And who could imagine that?

"I don't know what the heck Lou would do without it. He's such a people person," said Dotty. "Lou's 80. But as long as he's able to, I say, 'Why not?'"

Jodie Tillman can be reached at jtillman@sptimes.com or (727) 869-6247.

[Last modified January 11, 2008, 23:45:08]