The 2010 NCAA men’s basketball tournament already may have been jam-packed with upsets — apologies to fans of the Georgetown Hoyas, Kansas Jayhawks, Villanova Wildcats and the Syracuse Orange — but for restaurateurs, it was nothing but net increases in sales and traffic.
Even operators whose hometown teams were sent to far-away regions to play or were knocked out in the first or second round found that business stayed brisk, especially if they run restaurants in one of the tournament’s host cities. Deals and specials also were not needed, many operators said.
Oklahoma City hosted several games for the first two rounds of the tournament last weekend, and Bricktown Brewery, which is located downtown, drew fans from both the University of Kansas and Kansas State University. Supervisor Cory Grey said business was very strong, even over last year, when Oklahoma City hosted the Big 12 conference tournament.
The restaurant didn’t offer any specials last weekend. It didn’t have to, Grey said.
“It was kind of guaranteed business,” he said.
Business dropped off only a bit after Kansas fell to Northern Iowa in an upset last Saturday night.
“About half the Kansas fans stuck around and drank their sorrows away,” Grey said. “But we also saw a lot of K-State fans.”
Similarly, Heroes and Legends in Spokane, Wash., had no specials going during last weekend’s games, said general manager Jeff Panagos, other than “just being a sports bar.”
While he would not divulge specific sales numbers, Panagos added that the crowd in town for the tournament contributed to a significant increase in traffic compared with the first weekend of last year’s NCAA tournament. Fans and cheerleaders from several teams — including Purdue, Michigan State, Texas A&M and Maryland — packed into Heroes and Legends throughout the first weekend, Panagos said.
He acknowledged that business is likely to fall off in the second weekend now that the hometown team, Gonzaga University, lost in the second round.
“But University of Washington is still in it, and that will keep us going, and the Gonzaga women’s team is still in their tournament,” Panagos said. “We’ll still be busy. There’s also a huge local population of Michigan State alumni, and they come in here all the time.”
Joe Sorge, owner of downtown Milwaukee restaurants AJ Bombers, Swig and Water Buffalo, expected massive crowds, since his restaurants are located only blocks from the Bradley Center, where nearby teams like Minnesota and Ohio State played their opening weekend games. But he was surprised to see that many of those fans stuck around for lunch on Monday.
“We [had] a wait for lunch on Monday, which doesn’t happen very often,” Sorge said. “Over the whole weekend, the only limit to how much business you could do was how large your venue was. If I could have held 500 people at one time, I could have served 500 people at a time. The largest push came between sessions on Friday, and between 3:30 and 5:30 it was an absolute madhouse. But people weren’t unruly, and we were happy to play host. It was really good for business.”
Sorge, a social-media-savvy restaurateur, ran specials for participants in his restaurant’s “Bombers Bracketology” pool, including a free side with the purchase of an entrée and $2 Pabst Blue Ribbon and $2 Schlitz. For any guests who tweeted their presence on Twitter or checked in on Foursquare with a special “NCAAMKE” hash tag, AJ Bombers offered $3 Jack Daniel’s drinks throughout the tournament.
Even though Marquette lost to Washington and Wisconsin lost to his alma mater, Cornell, Sorge thinks business still will be booming in Milwaukee this coming weekend, even though the tournament crowd is gone and the hometown teams are out of the running.
“You pay more attention when your team’s in it, but you also still pay attention to the tournament when you’re in a bracket pool,” he said.
McFadden’s Restaurant & Saloon in Providence, R.I., didn’t get quite as many local guests during last weekend’s games, in part because several of the Big East teams in the tournament lost early, including Georgetown, Pittsburgh and Villanova, to say nothing of Providence College and the University of Connecticut failing to qualify for the “big dance” this year.
But that didn’t affect overall traffic and sales, said Missie Rose, the restaurant’s sales manager. The out-of-town fans kept McFadden’s busy.
“We did really well last weekend,” Rose said. “We were the official party location for the University of Tennessee [whose opening weekend games were in Providence] and there were still lots of Villanova alumni in here, so it was packed all weekend. We really hope the tournament comes back to Providence soon.”
McFadden’s ran a Buffalo wings special and a special burger menu for the tournament, as well as $3 Coors Light drafts and discounted buckets of Coors Light.
Now that the tournament games have switched to other host cities, business this weekend probably “won’t be as crazy,” Rose said, but McFadden’s still expects to be busy, as its 52 TVs and NCAA package through DirecTV will make it one of the more well-known March Madness spots in Providence.
This coming weekend, bars and restaurants in Syracuse, N.Y., are benefiting from visitors in town for the regional games. Cornell fans are expected to gather at Kitty Hoyne’s, an Irish pub in the Armory Square area of downtown, not far from the Carrier Dome, where East regional games will take place through Saturday. Owner David Hoyne said the pub reached out to Cornell fans and is promoting beer and appetizer specials built around the Big Red.
“It’s a great time of year for a sports fan, what with all the Cinderella stories,” he said. “That’s what’s so intriguing about Cornell, a real David and Goliath.”
Hoyne said business during March Madness is up over last year, and “we expect to be up 30 percent or more over a normal weekend.”
Contact Molly Gise at [email protected] and Mark Brandau at [email protected].
