As the New York Giants and New England Patriots battle on the field during Super Bowl XLVI today, game-related consumer spending is projected to reach an all-time high.
Total Super Bowl-related revenues are predicted to reach $11 billion, according to a survey by the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association conducted by BIGinsight. The average game-watcher is expected to shell out $63.87 on related merchandise, apparel and snacks, up from $59.33 last year, according to the survey. A whopping 71.3 percent of that will be on beverages and food, especially items like chicken wings, pizza and dip.
Those kinds of numbers are an appetizing thought to Middletown and Hamilton business owners.
Kim Snider of Wings on Brookwood, 147 N. Brookwood Ave. in Hamilton, said her family-owned business generates approximately three times the amount of revenue on Super Bowl Sunday than it does on a typical Sunday.
“Wings and football have always been a tradition,” she said. “(Super Bowl Sunday) is, by far, our busiest day of the year. We go through about 16,000 wings and probably about 8,000 boneless wings.”
The restaurant, which offered Facebook fans discounts for pre-sale orders, started taking reservations for pickup times on Sunday a week in advance. This week, customers have “inundated” Wings on Brookwood with not only more orders than in recent years, but also more wings per order as well, Snider said.
National Restaurant Association research shows that chicken wings (63 percent) now outpace pizza (61 percent) as a game-day “must-have.” However, dips or spread, garnered the top spot with 69 percent of votes from famished fans.
Super Bowl Sunday at Fricker’s in Middletown means a 40 percent to 60 percent boost in carry-out sales revenues, said spokesman Jim Manley.
“Nobody calls for orders of 10 (wings) for the Super Bowl,” Manley said.
“They all call for orders of 200 to 500 and that’s why the number is so exorbitant, because they have a number of folks over to their house and at that point they’re just trying to feed the world and we’re very fortunate to be a beneficiary.”
The restaurant, however, does not see as much walk-up traffic because most people are attending Super Bowl parties, Manley said. “With that, it’s about the same amount of food as we would normally do, it just doesn’t get eaten in our restaurant,” he said.
To accommodate the droves of customers who flock to the restaurant for its Frickin’ Chicken Wings, Fricker’s must book time for its fryers, reserve a portion of them for last-minute orders and create a waiting area for pick-up orders, Manley said.
Nick Dadabo, owner of Chester’s Pizza in Hamilton, said the although his store no longer delivers, business increases by 30 to 40 percent on Super Bowl Sunday compared to a typical Sunday.
Dadabo said he expects that much of an increase, if not more, this Sunday, in part because of special prices on pizza, sandwiches and chicken wings, and the “independent bump” local places receive from big-name pizza establishment advertising that he said get customers “thinking pizza.”
But the decisive factor in any surge in sales boils down to customers avoiding economic “gloom and doom” by immersing themselves in the Super Bowl, he said.
“I think people are trying to find a way to satisfy themselves and maybe escape a little bit from the reality that we’re going through a pretty tough time,” Dadabo said.
Although wholesale chicken prices notoriously go up around Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve and the Super Bowl, prices have flown the coop over during the past year, Snider said, a fact of life that may peck into profit margins.
“This is the first year I’ve watched it double,” Snider said. However, “We’ve not changed our prices. We’ve not changed anything.”
The price hikes have continued as sales for fresh chicken breasts, the highest priced meat, have plummeted, Snider said. “That determines how much they (suppliers) are going to charge for the wings,” she said. “They need to make up their money on the wings and we don’t have a choice. It is what it is.”
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