Patriots fan or Falcons fan, regardless of which NFL team you support, everyone expects lots of food and drinks during the big game. This year, more than 111 million people tuned in to watch Super Bowl LI and they were predicted to spend big money on their snacks: Nielsen predicted that consumers would spend $82 billion on chicken wings, $277 million on potato chips, and $1.2 billion on beer.
Avero’s restaurant software data shows that most of this spending, however, is not happening within restaurants, but rather within consumers’ homes. Looking at restaurant sales across the United States, restaurants that remained open on the day of the big game saw significant decreases in both their bar sales (-22.27%) and restaurant sales (-29.82%). However, one segment of restaurant sales that did see an increase was the delivery segment of restaurants (+14.59%). This goes to show that the trend for restaurants to continue to improve their delivery segments could not be more important than during the super bowl.
While the Patriots managed to shock fans and come from behind to win in overtime, Atlanta managed to hold on to a slight margin over Boston in restaurant and bar sales. Bars in both cities fared better than restaurants, however, even with the excitement of the last quarter they didn’t even meet normal Sunday sales levels.
Read more about how restaurant sales are affected by different events and how sales vary month to month on the Avero Index.
