This will be my 10th Superbowl and it has always been my busiest day of the year. I don’t do any advertising or discounting besides my normal everyday specials. It’s hard to keep up with all of the orders as it is. If I did additional advertising for Superbowl, we would not be able to handle it and there would be a lot of unsatisfied customers. We normally do 6x the amount of sales of a normal Sunday. I don’t feel that there is a need to discount because everyone is ordering that day regardless and like I said, we are already pushed to the limits as far as how much business we can handle.
The hardest part about Superbowl is that everyone wants their food at pretty much the same time: The first 2 hours prior to kickoff and then again at halftime. My advice is to make sure all of the prep work is done ahead of time. I pre cook around 10 cases of chicken wings and then just throw them down for a few minutes when the orders come in. This is the only way that I’ve been able to keep up with them. Wings have always been the thing that has slowed us down in the past. We also sauce and cheese as many pizzas that we have room for ahead of time as well.
Another piece of advice would be to make sure you have enough employees and assign everyone a specific job. I have my drivers, order takers at the phone station, 2 people at the pizza station (one making pizzas, the other cutting, boxing, and labeling), 2 people at the wing station (1 cooking wings and the other saucing and packaging), and a person expediting and cashing out customers. When it starts to slow down I send employees home early.
Good luck and hopefully Superbowl goes smooth for you and brings you lots of sales!