ST. LOUIS — The Super Bowl means super busy for some St. Louis area restaurants and the timing couldn’t be more perfect considering how rough it’s been the past 10 months.
Poor Richard’s is a restaurant known for its wings. Owner Mark Vigna anticipates it will fry 4,000 pounds of wings as customers flock to its two locations in Fenton and Eureka.
Vigna said he’s added an extra fryer just to keep up with curbside demand. After a year that brought indoor dining bans, capacity limits and many challenges, Poor Richard’s bartender Domenick Buwalda said Super Bowl madness is the morale booster the resilient staff needs.
"With everything being so off balanced and off-kilter, the Super Bowl is going to help us kick off 2021 right and hopefully we'll just be able to keep pushing and have a great year following that," Buwalda said.
The National Chicken Council predicts Americans will eat 1.4 billion wings this Sunday. Buwalda said the Chiefs being in the game help drive curbside orders. He's hoping Poor Richard's can sell 20,000 wings on game day.
While indoor dining bans and capacity limits haven’t hurt Pretzel Boy’s in Des Peres, owner Tim Garvey said the pandemic has greatly impacted its catering business.
Pretzel Boy’s has three locations in Sunset Hills, Des Peres and south St. Louis city. Garvey said the Super Bowl is the busiest day of the year for his business and he’s anticipating great sales despite the pandemic. On Sunday, the staff will start turning on the ovens at 5 a.m.
"We've really been looking forward to Super Bowl to propel us into the spring, into some warmer months ... hopefully we get Cardinals baseball back and everyone gets vaccinated ... it's absolutely a big day," Garvey said.
Super Bowl Sunday – a day that could provide a bit of normalcy for an industry that's taken quite a hit.
