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Buffalo Wild Wings has high hopes for football season

Buffalo Wild Wings has high hopes for football season

Managers for Buffalo Wild Wings said they’re ready for some football, which they expect will drive traffic to their stores once the National Football League kicks off its season Thursday night.

A new research note from Deutsche Bank analyst Jason West found that, of the 59 Buffalo Wild Wings managers surveyed from 39 states, 79 percent expected increases in traffic during broadcasts of football games this season. In addition, 21 percent of managers said traffic probably would remain flat compared with a year earlier, while none of the managers predicted that traffic would decrease.

“While managers are obviously going to have a positive bias,” West wrote, “we believe it is encouraging that managers remain bullish on the upcoming football season, despite macro and industry headwinds.”

In that same survey, 53 percent of Buffalo Wild Wings managers told Deutsche Bank that they expected promotional activity to increase in the second half of the year, compared with the latter half of 2009, while 45 percent expected it to remain flat. Only 2 percent of managers anticipated less discounting and dealing in the second half of 2010 compared with a year earlier.

The managers also reported sales momentum in August that they hope to continue by capitalizing on football-heavy traffic this fall. Sixty-three percent of respondents reported higher sales in August compared with the month before, and 64 percent of those managers reported increased year-over-year sales last month, compared with August of 2009.

The Minneapolis-based chain of more than 680 restaurants in 43 states once again will invest heavily in marketing to football fans. Not only has Buffalo Wild Wings brought back its official fantasy football league featuring ESPN analysts and well-known football bloggers, but it also has hosted scores of fantasy league draft parties across the country. Those parties at Buffalo Wild Wings locations provide groups with $100 in gift cards as well as a “draft kit” complete with draft boards, player stickers, beer koozies and a championship pennant.

Buffalo Wild Wings also is running a new contest for fans, the Pick ’Em Challenge, in which the guest from each location who correctly picks the outcome of the most NFL games gets entered into a drawing to win a trip to Pasadena, Calif., and play in a flag football game at the Rose Bowl.

MORE: See how other chains are courting football fans for the fall season.

Contact Mark Brandau at [email protected].

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