Grant DePorter jokes that Harry Caray’s Restaurant in Chicago, named after the famed Chicago Cubs announcer, has the market cornered on turning lemons into lemonade, given the team’s heart-breaking track record. So his last big promotion for weary Cubs fans turned a baseball into smithereens.
But this was not just any baseball.
DePorter, president of Harry Caray Restaurant Group, spent nearly $114,000 to buy the “Bartman ball” in an online auction. The last time that Cubs fans saw the ball, it had deflected off fan Steve Bartman in Game 6 of the 2003 National League Championship Series. Instead of getting out of the eighth inning of that game, the Cubs gave up eight runs to the Florida Marlins, lost the game 8-3 and ultimately lost the series.
Having paid six figures for the ball Cubs fans blamed for their missed opportunity, DePorter seized his. He had a special-effects expert from Hollywood detonate the ball in February 2004 as a rapt national audience watched live on NBC’s “Today Show.”
DePorter says the cathartic explosion was costly, but Harry Caray’s made the money back quickly.
“When we blew the baseball up, our sales went through the roof,” he says. “The ball became bigger than Michael Jordan and the Sears Tower. We put the remnants on display, and people were taking pictures of it nonstop. People thought I was crazy for blowing up $114,000, but now they say it was genius.”
Like DePorter, other operators of sports-theme restaurants say it can be smart to change the game plan when a favorite local team is losing and to use special promotions to keep guest counts afloat. But operators and consultants also agree that a continual focus on service and the guest experience keep these restaurants winning, even when their team is on a losing streak.
One such slump for the Cubs in 1997, when they lost their first 14 games, gave Harry Caray’s a profitable opportunity.
“I was hearing fans moan and groan when the Cubs started 0-5,” DePorter says. “They said, ‘This is depressing, so why don’t you discount your beer?’ I took [the price] down to 45 cents, because ’45 was the last time the Cubs made the World Series, until they won their first game. Fans from everywhere flocked to the restaurant. People bussed in from out of state for two weeks. It went to 0-14, and it was two weeks of nonstop chaos and craziness.”
During that period, he says, Harry Caray’s sold nearly 50,000 45-cent draft beers and gained national exposure for what sportscasters dubbed “the longest happy hour in National League history.”
Happy hours also keep customers coming back to Sport Restaurant and Bar in Seattle, chef-owner John Howie says, even though the SuperSonics basketball team finished with a 31-51 record this past season and missed the playoffs. The promotion features half-priced pizzas and $2 pints.
Although the Sonics had a losing season, Sport’s location next to the team’s home court, KeyArena, attracts many sports fans.
BUILDING A BIGGER FAN BASE Operators worried about how a losing local team would affect sales and traffic at their sports-theme restaurants could borrow a strategy from the playbook of Seattle’s John Howie: Adopt a new team from across the country or even another country. Howie’s upscale eatery Sport Restaurant and Bar, located right next to the Space Needle and KeyArena, where the NBA’s SuperSonics play, has received a boost in sales and guest counts from fans of far-away sports teams, he says. The largest groups are fans of the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks and alumni of The Ohio State University, who packed the restaurant to watch the Buckeyes’ football and basketball games this season, despite the games being televised early in the morning on the West Coast. “During college football season, we’d get Ohio State fans in here at 9 a.m.,” Howie says. “That’s awesome for us. When we have them in the morning, it makes a nice long, busy day.” Howie estimates that about 85 to 90 people, all members of the Washington/Seattle chapter of the Ohio State Alumni Association, came to the restaurant for every Buckeye football game. For each of the team’s two biggest games of the season, the regular-season finale against archrival the University of Michigan and the BCS National Championship Game against the University of Florida, about 300 fans showed up. Though Seattle does not have a major professional hockey team, it’s not far from Vancouver, British Columbia, home of the Canucks, which advanced to the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs by beating the Dallas Stars. “Hockey’s good for us,” Howie says. “We’re one of the only places in Seattle that carries everything. Right now, the Canucks are doing well. We expect that the deeper they go, the better things will get.” Though Canucks fans have bolstered sales at Sport during the hockey playoffs, the restaurant did lose out on additional revenue when it had to close because of a broken water main the day of the team’s first game against its second-round opponent, the Anaheim Ducks. Not all of Sport’s adopted teams are from out of state, however. Washington State University, located in Pullman, Wash., about 300 miles away, draws a healthy crowd at Sport during its men’s basketball games, Howie says. But the favored team locally is still the University of Washington Huskies, he says, which play their home football and basketball games in Seattle, drawing bigger crowds and boosting sales. Washington State brought in some large groups, but the Huskies cost the restaurant an opportunity for even more revenue by failing to make any postseason tournament, Howie says. “The Huskies were supposed to be great in basketball, but they went down pretty quickly,” Howie says. “Washington State did make the NCAA tournament, but the sales compared to when the Huskies made it [in 2005] as a No. 1 seed were only about 80 percent as much. This is definitely a Husky town. Those fans will take the whole day off work to watch games, so we missed out on that this year. It’s definitely a huge difference in sales.” —Mark Brandau
“On game night, we do well whether the Sonics are or not,” Howie says. “Those were really great nights two years ago, when the Sonics made the playoffs. When they struggle, like this year, people are here for pregame, then after that we’re about half-full.”
Sport starts its happy hour once Sonics games are over to get fans in after they exit the arena. But if the Sonics permanently leave KeyArena and the city—the team’s new owners reportedly have considered moving to Oklahoma City—it could cost Sport a significant percentage of its sales.
“The Sonics could move to [Seattle suburbs] Renton or Bellevue, and it’d be bad for us,” Howie says. “I’ve looked at it, and the Sonics bring in about 8 percent of sales. As far as what could replace that, I guess folks without season ticket bills may come in here and spend more, but I don’t want to test that.”
WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS … Don’t neglect the local team, but your restaurant’s theme and marketing should be about more than just one team or one season. Focus on service and execution so that you always win with your guests, even if your team doesn’t. Try catering to fans of a team from far away, if they aren’t rivals of the local favorite.
Restaurant consultant Chris Tripoli says Sport and other restaurants like it should emphasize and market an experience for fans of all sports, so that they attract more than just devotees of unpopular or struggling teams.
“We have clients that are in this situation, and we tell them that if they’re a sports-theme restaurant, they’re bigger than one season or one team,” says Tripoli, president of Houston-based A’La Carte Foodservice Consulting Group. “They’re in the casual-theme, entertainment business. Their team is part of that, but we advise them to market the bigger issue: Sports is entertainment.”
For example, he says, over the course of a whole season, successful sports-theme eateries can build traffic during Monday Night Football even if the local team loses the game or doesn’t play in it. Having a long-term strategy for marketing and promoting many sports throughout the year makes an eatery less dependent on one sport or team and less vulnerable to traffic swings if a favored team loses.
“If restaurants can create interest in this bigger idea, sports as entertainment,” Tripoli says, “and they get people used to coming in regularly, they will have a better chance than others of getting through this. Never neglect the local team, but you can’t hang your hat only on that team. It’s just a piece of the puzzle. Come up with a plan that’s bigger than one season or one team.”
Some operators necessarily focus on one city’s teams. John Wentzell has to as president of concessionaire Delaware North Cos.—Boston, and president of Boston’s TD Banknorth Garden, the arena that hosts the NBA’s Celtics and the NHL’s Bruins, which both missed the playoffs this past season.
However, his company, which owns the Bruins and the arena, makes investments with far more than one season in mind.
As part of a $20 million upgrade to the TD Banknorth Garden, Delaware North installed a $6 million high-definition scoreboard and made improvements to the concession stands’ appearances and menu capabilities. The need for an enhanced fan experience, not the prospect of winning seasons for the Bruins or Celtics, prompted the renovation, Wentzell says.
“You have to build your business based on a team having an average year,” he says. “This [upgrade] was a combination of what we felt we needed to have the best game environment we could create. It was the right time to do it. We’re not looking back and counting our dollars. It is a longer-term investment.”
Rick Abramson, president of Delaware North Cos. Sportservice, also values ongoing efforts to improve fans’ experiences over stopgaps like discounted food.
“We have done things like specials in food and discounts and promotions,” he said, “but you can’t live on that.”
Abramson, whose company oversees concessions at more than 50 professional sports venues worldwide, says high-value initiatives like all-inclusive foodservice, where concessions are factored into the cost of an individual ticket, will only grow in popularity. Execution is vital, he says, because operators who perform well regardless of a team’s win-loss record make money during good seasons and bad.
“You’ve got to be on your game every day, much like the players on the floor,” Abramson says. “We try to give the same service if the team is in first place or last place. If you have a first-place team, but lousy food and beverage and service, you’ll have low per-capita [income]. So if you stick to executing well, it’ll all balance out.”