If you can find a chuck roast for cheap enough it’s pretty cost effective. Throw in a bunch of root vegetables (potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, whatever you want) to cook with it and it extends how far your food dollar goes quite a bit. These usually take a fair amount of time overall but a lot of that time is not active time.
It’s state by state in the US but there’s very few where smoking would be allowed in a restaurant left. Specifics are often down to the city level. They still allow smoking on outdoor patios in my city. There used to be provisions around tavern licenses where they could have smoking indoors in a room which had separate external ventilation but that’s really in the weeds of zoning. I think they’re trying to kill the few of these licenses remaining, too.