Tobacco Beverage Companies opens 50th store

IBR Staff//July 30, 2015//

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A Big Smoke store owned by Tobacco Beverage Companies. Photo courtesy of Andrea Jackson. — Tobacco Beverage Companies opened this Big Smoke store in Post Falls in July. Photo courtesy of Tobacco Beverage Companies.

The Nampa-based Tobacco Beverage Companies opened its 50th store the week of July 20.

All but four of the company’s stores are in Idaho. The latest is a 2,000-square-foot Big Smoke store that opened in Post Falls, said president Andrea Jackson.

Tobacco Beverage Companies got its start when the companies Big Smoke and Tobacco Connection merged in 2012. That’s when Jackson, whose brother John Jackson is the president of the Jacksons Food Stores convenience store chain, joined as president. The company had a combined 44 stores then.

Now it has 50 stores, some of them Big Smoke and some Tobacco Connection, in Idaho, Oregon and Washington. The chain sells fine cigars, wine and beer, pipe tobacco and accessories, cigarettes, vapor cigarettes, and lottery tickets. In Weiser, it operates a liquor store as a licensee for the state of Idaho, Andrea Jackson said.

About 300 people work for the company, which is owned by three people: Hal Baird, the previous owner of Big Smoke, and Keith Weeks, who owned Tobacco Connection.

Jackson said the company will probably eventually open other stores, and might expand its range to other states. She doesn’t know where or when.

“We’re pretty good at what we do, and we’re always looking for something new,” she said. “The owners are younger people, and they’re not done yet.”

Updated at 11:55 July 30 to show that Keith Weeks owned the Tobacco Connection