Impact of Playoff Hockey on Restaurants Posted by Brad Brooks at April 16, 2009 10:00 AM
Have you ever wondered how much of an impact a major sports event like playoff hockey or basketball has on the restaurants in the city?
We did too.
So we took at look at what last night's playoff game did to drive restaurant sales.
We aggregated local restaurant sales in Vancouver for the first playoff game which was last night (Wednesday). We took a cross section of casual dining, fine dining, pubs and sports bars and compared yesterday's sales to a typical non-hockey Wednesday.
We saw some interesting things.
Overall, sales were up, but what you can't see is that almost 20% of the restaurants that we polled actually saw a decline in sales. Nearly all of those restaurants were in the fine dining category and likely have few or no television sets to see the game.
Some restaurants were up as much as 110% over a typical Wednesday's sales.
The makeup of the increase won't surprise hockey lovers (or beer lovers, for that matter). While food sales were up a respectable 16.4%, beer sales were up over 70%.
We also looked at the sales pattern over the evening.
Sales built steadily and then dropped of significantly when the puck dropped. This did not happen across the board however. Those in the pub and sports bar categories showed considerable strength in sales even after the puck dropped.
The BC Restaurant and Foodservices Association is encouraging their members to put promotiions in place to take advantage of the increased dining. As well, they've put together a partnership with a major electronics retailer to give their members a discount on flat-panel televisions. Smart.
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