GUESTS: Preparing Your Restaurant’s & Fan Club’s Offseason
With the NFL season over, your restaurant’s or sports bar’s local fan club typically would go into hibernation. But if you can keep them engaged, you may be lucky enough to get them to return your bar to check out other games and events you host. Now’s the time to also calculate your viewing party and events ROI. This post helps you do both so you can prep your business and fan clubs for next year.
DID YOU KNOWS…
Super Bowl Draft Beer Sales Dropped
If your restaurant’s draft beer sales dropped during the Super Bowl this year, you’re not alone. According to BeerBoard, draft beer sales dropped 1.3% compared to 2019 at chain restaurants. Beer sales, however, did spike 21.3% in Kansas City, MO. Light lager declined 1.2% overall and Bud Light sales dropped 22% compared to last year.
Cops Catch Man Hiding in Supermarket Ceiling
Auburn, WA cops caught a man who had been hiding in the ceiling of Haggen Northwest Fresh Market since Christmas. The man was allegedly holding $8,000 in stolen goods, including a 17-pound wheel of artisan cheese that had a $395 price tag. The cops originally tried hunting the guy down with K-9 units and heat-mapping tech but came up empty. They even crawled around the rafters for 4.5 hours trying to find the man’s hiding spot. Eventually the cops got a tip about the residence of “nicotine-craving vent crawler.” He wasn’t living in the ceiling after all – just using it to get in and out of the supermarket.
Big Three Dominance
Novak Djokovic’s triumph at the Australian Open was not only his eight title in Melbourne and his 17th Grand Slam title overall, it was also the 13th consecutive Grand Slam title won by either of the “Big Three”, i.e. Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. It’s the second-longest streak of major titles those three have shared in their record-laden careers, with the longest coming between 2005 and 2009, when the tennis triumvirate won 18 Grand Slam titles in a row. Back then, Djokovic had yet to join the Swiss and Spanish tennis gods at Mount Olympus though, winning only one of the 18 titles, with Federer winning 11 and Nadal adding six to the tally.
MISERY MEET COMPANY
Why it matters to you: The grossest things seem to bind our industry together.
It’s clear that the editors at Eater have some experience in the restaurant industry. In a recent post, their staffers recounted the all the things that made them hate their restaurant jobs and it is sooo relatable. My favorite is, the horror that is, marrying ketchup bottles. I thought this was so gross, as an owner/operator, I moved to serving ketchup in bullets. Ironically, we used less ketchup and no one ever had to appreciate how gross it is to reuse the same bottles over and over again. Some of the other terrible contributors to restaurant employee nightmares were things like a cream-based soup and even the smell of Subway’s bread.
However, an honest critique of the Eater’s effort to identify gross things you can’t un-see would say, they fell short on their list. But this I know, each of us owns memories of some fetid practice that we have observed during our time in the industry. For me, it was the dumpster area. Ironically, not for the reasons you might think. The refuse area also seemed to be the place where our staff that smoked would retire to during their breaks. Sure, the smell of rotting trash and spent oil were not sufficient competition for the stink of a cigarette, but the fact that anyone willingly hung out near it will always gross me out. What is your least favorite memory from the biz? What grossed you out? Please share in the comments and maybe we can publish an even more exhaustive list of what is icky in our industry.
[Source: Eater]
WE ARE GLOBAL
Why it matters to you: The impact of the coronavirus is being felt worldwide.
The coronavirus is raging throughout China and specifically in Wuhan. Unfortunately, we are feeling the ripple effects here in the United States. This is not limited to the 12 positive tests in the US as of this writing but can also be felt by our industry as well. Restaurateurs in Chinatown say their businesses are suffering because of the panic about coronavirus.
They say that the neighborhood has been noticeably less busy. However, there have been no confirmed cases in NYC during the outbreak that has infected thousands worldwide. The outbreak has also provoked xenophobic and racist responses about the Chinese people and diaspora, including from those who push age-old and bigoted misperceptions of Chinese culinary habits.
There is justified fear that restaurants can become vector points in an epidemic, but with so few documented cases are we jumping to conclusions about the safety of eating in a Chinese restaurant? At this point, the answer would appear to be yes. However, it’s no unfair to respect the fear that an epidemic can cause. We certainly hope this doesn’t do lasting damage to the Chinese cuisine vertical, but we aren’t surprised that folks gut reaction is to ignorance and fear. We can all learn a lesson from how the segment responds to this crisis.
[Source: Grub Street]
