Famed sportswriter Grantland Rice long ago suggested, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.”
Restaurant owners in Starkville and Columbus are inclined to disagree.
It’s not that they are poor sports, of course. But over the years, veteran restaurateurs have noticed a connection with victories and sales. Regardless of the outcome of Saturday’s 11 a.m. game featuring 12th-ranked Mississippi State and sixth-ranked Texas A&M, restaurants and hotels in the Golden Triangle will be busy this weekend.
But an MSU win is especially important to restaurants.
“You bet it matters,” said John Bean, whose “Eat With Us” group owns seven restaurants in Starkville and Columbus. “When State wins, we’ve found that check averages are higher. When folks are leaving the game happy, they go out and celebrate more. When State loses, some of those people just aren’t in the kind of mood. Some decided not to go out and the ones who do don’t celebrate as much.”
Jay Yates, owner of The Veranda restaurant in Starkville, says that the carry-over effect of a win often lingers well into the following week.
“That’s really true in this situation we have this week with Auburn coming in next Saturday,” Yates said. “Back in 2000, State had back-to-back home games against Auburn and Florida and State won both games. What we found out is that we weren’t just busy on the weekends, we stayed busy the whole week before the Florida game. When you’re winning, people want to go out and share the excitement of what’s going on. ”
While most of Starkville’s 900 hotel rooms have been booked, there is still some availability from the 1,229 rooms in Columbus, although most of the larger hotels are reporting full capacity, according the Columbus-Lowndes Convention and Visitors Bureau Director Nancy Carpenter.
“Octobers are always really good months for our hotels and restaurants and football has a lot to do with that,” said Carpenter, who said last October’s restaurant tax produced more than $23,000 in collections while the hotel tax surpassed $130,000.
Bean noted business at his Columbus restaurants are also impacted by geography, of all things.
“We started noticing some time back that when State played SEC games at home against teams from east of Columbus, like Auburn or Georgia, our business in Columbus was much higher,” Bean said. “Teams traveling east to Starkville tend to be more likely to stop there. It’s not that we don’t get some business in Columbus, but it’s not as high as when teams and their fans are passing through Columbus to get to the game.”
Saturday’s game will start at 11 a.m., but both Bean and Yates say the early start will have an impact on when they will busy.
“We may be busier on Friday night because of the game time than we are Saturday night,” Bean said. “The game will be over by 2, 2:30, so there’s some so people may decide not to stay in town. But we’re not complaining. Anytime there’s a home game, it’s good for business.”
Yates said he prefers afternoon games.
“The ideal time for us would be 2:30 in the afternoon because it means we’ll have a good dinner crowd after the game,” said Yates, whose restaurant hosts the MSU post-game radio show. “Fans might like night games better, but restaurants like day games.”
Although the game time for next week’s home game against Auburn hasn’t been set, the game will not be played at 11 a.m. The SEC has already announced that the 11 a.m. game will be Louisiana-Monroe at Kentucky.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 30 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
