Weeks before Saturday’s football game in the new stadium, the staff of Blarney Pub and Grill was preparing for the heavy crowds. When the day finally came, everyone was on the schedule, shelves were stocked with extra inventory and a grill was set up on the patio.
“Nobody knew what to expect,” Blarney general manager Adam “Rookie” Lanoue said. “You hope for the best and prepare for the worst.”
For Blarney and other Dinkytown and Stadium Village businesses, the day was preceded with lots of preparation and ended with fatter wallets —local businesses scored up to seven times the sales of an average Saturday.
Several businesses, such as Big 10 and the Library Bar and Grill , said they’ll have more people on staff for future games. Others, like Stub and Herb’s and Campus Pizza , will work to improve the sound quality of the music in their expanded serving areas.
Outdoor patios seemed to be the biggest crowd-pleasers.
Even while abiding by the fire marshal’s guidelines for the amount of people they could let in, Stub and Herb’s had about 5,000 people walk through their doors and in their “beer garden” out back, owner Josh Zavadjil said. For future events, they’ll add more tailgating games outside.
Stub and Herb’s had twice as many employees working in addition to 30 volunteers — family and friends of the staff — who helped sell beer and food outside. In the end, they came out with five times the amount of sales of a usual Saturday.
At the Library in Dinkytown, about 1,500 showed up to enjoy the outdoor festivities, raking in five times the bar’s average sales, assistant general manager Joe Berg said.
When Panino’s at the U tried to follow suit and set up a tailgating area outside their storefront, they got in trouble with the property management. By the next game, they hope to have the matter sorted out and keep tables outside.
Panino’s, which has a satellite stand inside TCF Bank Stadium , scheduled double the staff and reported doubled revenue, manager Eliot Hawkinson said.
Many business owners were surprised by the amount of people who stayed for the game.
Big 10 was completely full with people lined up outside the door up until halftime, general manager Ray Graves said. In the end, sales tripled.
“As far as we know, it was the most sales dollars in the history of the restaurant,” he said.
Blarney was packed during the football game, as well, something that’s never happened before, Lanoue said.
Despite having 35 televisions, Berg said he didn’t expect having so many people stay at the Library during the game.
“There were a lot of people who didn’t have tickets,” he said, “so that definitely helped us with having the TVs.”
For late games, Campus Pizza is applying for a license to join the ranks of neighboring bars and stay open until 2 a.m., owner Jim Rosvold said. Having just added the bar back in January, he said they’re still building up traffic, but eventually hopes to make it a weekly event.
“When the business warrants, we’ll start to stay open late,” he said.
Overall, it was fun to see people of all ages and backgrounds excited about the game, Lanoue said.
“We had everybody from grandparents to college students all getting along and hanging out together,” he said. “I’ll take that any day.”