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One year into new ownership, cigar store plans to double in size
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Smitty's Cigar & Tobacco owners Ivette and Rene Barrios walk through their new location at McEver Corners shopping center Tuesday, April 24, 2018, as they prepare to move to the larger unit just a few doors down from their current location in the shopping center. - photo by Scott Rogers
Fifty-three years after he and his family left their tobacco plantation behind as they fled Cuba, Rene Barrios and his wife, Ivette, are about to double the size of their own cigar shop: Smitty’s Cigar and Tobacco. The 20-year-old cigar store on Dawsonville Highway was purchased by the Barrios family in 2017, making it one of three businesses in Georgia and Florida owned by the entrepreneurial family. And with a year in business, Smitty’s is on the edge of a serious expansion in the Kohl’s-anchored McEver Corners on the highway.