MILFORD, Ohio — As the country settles down to watch the big game, restaurants are hard at work, serving up one of their busiest days of the year.
With an estimated one in seven Americans ordering takeout this Super Bowl Sunday, demand for pizza and wings is at an all-time high. Places like Roosters in Milford have been preparing all football season to deliver.
Miranda Osterbrock has been working Super Bowl Sunday for the past 12 years. For the past six years, she’s worked as the first assistant manager at Roosters in Milford. In that time, she said she’s gotten her gameday plan down to a science.
“We’re very busy,” she said. “We’re fully staffed with hostesses and kitchen staff that have been doing this year after year.”
That means extra staff answering phones for takeout orders, at the hostess desk greeting customers coming in for pick-up and at tables set aside to keep everything organized so food can keep moving as quickly as possible.
On Super Bowl Sunday, the National Chicken Council estimates Americans will eat about 1.45 billion chicken wings. Osterbrock said Roosters itself is prepared to serve thousands.
“We get through 300 to 400 wings every 30 minutes,” she said.
A majority of those orders come through carry out, and on Sunday, Osterbrock said the phone has been ringing nonstop since about 11:00 a.m. Then come game time, demand shifts.
“Then the restaurant’s kind of full and everybody’s just hanging out,” she said.
Roosters opens a buffet for Super Bowl Sunday. (Spectrum News 1/Michelle Alfini)
To keep her dine-in customers satisfied, Osterbrock said Roosters started a Super Bowl Sunday buffet, with plenty of wings, pizza and other appetizers available through the evening and afternoon. She said it’s served as an effective way to keep some of the pressure off her waitstaff and keep sales momentum going when carry out orders die down after kickoff.
“It works to lure people to dine in,” she said.
Osterbrock said Roosters keeps busy nearly every gameday, but Super Bowl Sunday is its own special beast. However, with the right staff, put in the right positions to succeed, she said it’s not hard to find a winning strategy to keep business coming in and customers satisfied through the night.
After all, on a night like this one, restaurants like Roosters can’t miss out on serving up its signature dish.
“Wings is the thing,” she said. “I don’t know how that started but I’m glad it did.”
