The regular breakfast crowd was only slightly thinner at the Bedford Restaurant today before the sun came up, on this first day of Virginia’s smoking ban in restaurants.

This country cooking-style eatery on U.S. 460 in Bedford usually draws a healthy early-morning crowd, largely of smokers.

Owner Clay Pope said at least two of the restaurant’s regular patrons who smoke did not show up this morning.

“I don’t know where they would go,” Pope said, referring to the fact that all restaurants now are smoke-free, unless they have separately ventilated rooms for smoking.

Edna Hickman came for breakfast, though she smoked two cigarettes before showing up at the restaurant at 6:15 a.m. She knew she would not be able to smoke with her morning coffee, which is her daily routine.

“Drinking this coffee, you really want a cigarette,” said Hickman, 74, while sitting at one of the restaurant’s square wooden tables. “It doesn’t feel good at all.”

But the morning’s mood was different for Dale and Barbara Hull, who dined in the non-smoking section at the Bedford Restaurant for the first time ever.

Previously when they stopped for breakfast, the couple headed to the restaurant’s back non-smoking section, which has fewer tables than the former smoking area.

Barbara Hull said she often could smell the smoke even in the non-smoking section.

“I’m going to enjoy that it’s not like that,” said Hull, 50, who helps to run her family’s business, Owens Market & Truck Plaza in Bedford.