Businesses steel selves for busy day of hawking food

~ Super Bowl Sunday is one of the biggest days of the year for eating.

For Schnucks, Super Bowl Sunday effectively started Friday. Instead of waiting until Sunday, the organized Super Bowl partyers have already started coming in, stocking up on snacks, sodas and beer.

Store manager Dennis Marchi isn't surprised by the buying spree. He said this Sunday is the biggest day of the year for per-capita food consumption.

"We see a very good increase in business," he said. "It starts on Friday and goes right through Saturday and Sunday."

Everywhere grocery stores, pizza places and sports bars are gearing up for one of their busiest days of the year.

As if Super Bowl Sunday isn't busy enough for pizza places already, the Cape Girardeau Pizza Hut is trying to make this year even busier.

"Not only were we busy before, now we're asking for even more trouble," said Emily Taylor, the local Pizza Hut general manager.

On a day when her store has to increase its staff from six people to about 30 -- the busiest delivery day of the year -- Pizza Hut is also trying to increase its dine-in business with the benefit of a new big-screen TV.

With the combination of the TV and a Super Bowl commercial featuring Jessica Simpson, Taylor expects more people than any previous Super Bowl Sunday to pick up the phone and call Pizza Hut.

Pizza is big business on Super Bowl Sunday. What started as a football championship game 40 years ago has quickly become a national holiday. Getting together and ordering huge masses of pizza, wings and other goodies has become the norm.

A recent survey commissioned by Domino's Pizza found that pizza is the favorite Super Bowl food, followed by wings.

Last year between 11 a.m. and midnight on Super Bowl Sunday, the Cape Girardeau Domino's locations sold 800 pizzas, said director of operations Jeff Rawson. Most of those orders hit in a small two-hour window starting about an hour before kickoff and ending about an hour afterward, Rawson said.

The rush for pies means that local pizza chains have to stock up and coordinate their supplies. If one store runs out of toppings, sauce, dough or other supplies, a nearby store will come to the rescue, Rawson and Taylor said.

Buffalo Wild Wings in Cape Girardeau doesn't make pizzas, but it has a large chunk of the lucrative wing market. General manager Jerry Lynn said the store sold about 9,000 wings the last Super Bowl Sunday, its busiest take-out day of the year.

Some orders are as large as 500 wings. Lynn's store also hopes to draw dine-in crowds with six big screens and an array of beer. "We go through a lot of drafts and a lot of buckets," he said.

Pizza places, sports bars and the Schnucks deli have already taken advance food orders for the big game. Domino's will make one delivery of 80 pizzas on Sunday to the Student Rec Center at Southeast Missouri State University.

Even though the business comes over three days at Schnucks, there's still a rush on Sunday as the last-minute plans are finalized and people rush to get something to take to a party.

At the pizza parlors, all the business comes on Sunday. At Pizza Hut, Taylor said the staff is made ready for the onslaught of business in advance.

"We do a touch-up on their public relations skills," she said. "We want them to understand it's a strenuous day."

But for those who sacrifice their own party and pigging out, the tips may make the pain a little easier to suffer.

"We hope people understand that they're sacrificing the game," said Taylor. "Generally it is a very good tipping day -- better than around Christmas, because people are celebrating, not trying to save money."

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182