How to Start a Cigar Program in Your Country Club

Country clubs are the easiest cigar program to run and the most commonly botched. The easy part is the customer, a member with a house account who already spends money at your club and who does not price-shop a cigar the way a walk-in retail customer does. The botched part is almost always inventory planning. MDC’s catalog holds 5,542 active cigar products, and a club that tries to sample its way through 60 of them in year one ends up with dry sticks in a case nobody restocks. Below is the way I would open a program at a club today, with the counts, the billing mechanics, and the seasonal cadence.

What does it take to open a cigar program at a country club?

A working country club cigar program needs four things: a humidor holding 300 cigars or more, 8 to 25 SKUs, a member-billing path through the existing POS, and a legal place to smoke. Budget $900 to $1,500 for a 300-count countertop cabinet, or $3,000 to $6,000 installed for a wall display in the 1,500-count range.

The order matters. Get the smoking area settled before buying inventory, because a club that sells cigars members cannot legally light within a golf cart ride of the clubhouse will move a third of what it projected. Then set up billing, then buy cigars. Humidification hardware, seasoning time, and rack layout are covered in humidor setup, and seasoning a new cabinet takes two to three weeks before the first box goes in.

How much cigar inventory should a club open with?

Open with 200 to 300 cigars across 8 to 12 SKUs at a locker room or halfway house case, and 500 to 700 cigars across 18 to 25 SKUs if the club has a dedicated lounge or terrace. Anything past 25 facings in year one produces slow movers before the season ends.

The most common box size in MDC’s catalog is 20 cigars, covering 37.5% of all cigar SKUs, so opening stock plans get built in 20-count increments.

Program size	Facings (SKUs)	Opening cigars	Typical member price per cigar	Humidor
Locker room or halfway house case	8 to 12	200 to 300	$8 to $15	300-count countertop cabinet
Grill room or terrace program	18 to 25	500 to 700	$7 to $25	1,500-count wall or freestanding display
Full cigar lounge	40 to 60	1,200 to 2,000	$6 to $60 and up	Cabinet run or walk-in

Packs of 10 or fewer make up 16.7% of MDC’s cigar SKUs, which is the right tool for testing a new brand at a club without committing to a full box of 20 or 25. A 10-count like the Oliva Serie V Maduro Torpedo at $115.00 per pack lets a beverage manager put a premium torpedo in the case, see whether members reach for it, and decide in six weeks instead of six months.

How do you put cigars on a member’s account?

Ring cigars as a retail SKU inside the club’s existing POS and route the charge to the member number, the same path used for logo balls and gloves. Cigars are taxable merchandise in almost every state, so they cannot ride on a food and beverage minimum. Expect a 3 to 5 day setup with the POS vendor.

Two details save arguments later. First, keep cigars out of the F&B minimum calculation and say so in the member communication, because members who discover the exclusion on a statement treat it as a bait and switch. Second, decide up front whether guests can charge to the host member. Most clubs I supply allow it, and tournament weeks are the reason.

Which cigars should a club stock first?

Stock the middle of the size range first. Across 4,200 cigars in MDC’s catalog with recorded measurements, the average cigar runs 5.77 inches long with a 51.6 ring gauge, and a club case built around toros and robustos in that neighborhood will outsell one built around lanceros and 60 ring behemoths.

Then add one 6x60 for the cart crowd, because a 60 ring gauge cigar lasts a back nine. The Asylum 13 Corojo 6x60 at $347.00 per 25 covers that slot. Add one recognizable name for guests who do not smoke often, one bolder blend for the regulars, and one box-pressed option like the Montecristo Classic Collection No 2 BP at $391.00 per 20 for the grill room. MDC’s catalog prices run from $2.00 to $1999.00 per unit, so there is room to build a case that serves a $9 cart cigar and a $40 anniversary dinner cigar without going outside one order.

How often will a country club reorder cigars?

Across 9,115 repeat purchases of the same cigar by the same venue in MDC’s records, the median gap between reorders is 90 days and the average is 159 days. That maps almost exactly to a quarterly buying rhythm, which is what most clubs land on: a pre-season buy, a mid-summer buy, a fall buy, and a holiday buy.

The average being longer than the median tells you something useful. Half the reorders happen inside three months, and a long tail of seasonal venues stretches the average out to five. Northern clubs sit in that tail. If your club closes the terrace in November, plan the December holiday order as a separate, smaller buy rather than trying to stretch October inventory across the winter.

How do you tie cigars to a member-guest or club championship?

For a 120-player shotgun, plan 1.5 cigars per player, so 180 cigars, or 9 boxes of 20. Set the station at the turn or on a par 3 with a beverage cart, not in the pro shop, and bill the cigars to the event budget rather than to individual members.

Member-guest is the single best cigar day of the year at most clubs, because guests smoke more freely than they would at their own club and hosts pick up the tab. A branded band or a simple event-day cigar sleeve costs little and gets members asking for the same blend in the case afterward. A 10-count pack such as the AJ Fernandez New World Dorado Gordito at $102.00 works well for smaller fields and for prize-table use.

What does a year of cigar sales look like at a seasonal club?

A northern club typically does 60 to 70% of annual cigar volume between Memorial Day and Labor Day, with a secondary bump in the six weeks before the holidays. A four-order year is standard: March pre-season, late May, mid-August, and mid-November for gifting and locker stuffers.

Southern and desert clubs invert the curve, with January through April as the peak and August as the dead month. Either way, build the ordering calendar off the club’s event schedule, not off a generic quarterly reminder. Ordering patterns by venue type, including private clubs and resort operations, are broken out in the wholesale cigar buyers guide and the hospitality pages.

Does a private club need a tobacco license to sell cigars?

Yes in most states. Federal law requires every tobacco retailer to verify age 21 and to check photo ID for anyone appearing under 27, per FDA’s retail rules. State other-tobacco-products retail licenses vary widely, with annual fees commonly running $10 to several hundred dollars per location.

Check three things with your state before the first box arrives: whether a private club selling to members counts as a retailer, whether an OTP excise obligation attaches to product purchased from out of state, and whether the club’s smoking area is exempt under the state clean indoor air statute. Start with FDA’s retail sales of tobacco products page and the FDA Tobacco 21 guidance, then confirm state specifics through the CDC STATE System, which tracks state tobacco licensing and clean indoor air provisions. Federal permits administered by TTB apply to manufacturers and importers, not to a club reselling finished cigars.

Where do members smoke if the clubhouse is smoke free?

The workable answer at most clubs is a 200 to 400 square foot outdoor terrace or patio with 6 to 10 seats, sited downwind of dining and within sight of the 18th green. Indoor lounges require dedicated exhaust and a state law exemption, and both take months.

Start outdoors. A terrace program with heaters extends the season by four to six weeks on both ends and costs a fraction of a ventilated indoor room. If the outdoor program proves the demand, the indoor build has numbers behind it.

Browse current stock on the shop page, or tell me the club’s event calendar and case size and I will put together an opening list at get started.

Sources and method: figures come from MDC’s internal invoice corpus of 24,770 product-linked line items from US venues dated April 19, 2016 through August 28, 2026, and from the active catalog of 5,542 cigar products as of August 28, 2026. Reorder timing reflects 9,115 repeat purchases of the same cigar by the same venue. Regulatory points come from published FDA, CDC, and TTB material.

Written by Peter Roth. Last reviewed August 28, 2026.