With so much at stake for the big players in Miami like Peyton Manning, Drew Brees and The Who, Sunday's matchup is more than just another football game. The stakes are just as high, though, for every wing joint in the country as they prepare for an ass-kicking the likes of which would make the Rams blush.
Dallas is no exception to the national wing rush, and preparations at two Lemmon Avenue competitors tell the tale.
Wing Stop and Buffalo Wild Wings are both preparing for the Super Bowl of their wing year. Wing Stop has doubled its weekly wing order and informed its staff that no one is getting the day off, says Wing Stop associate Jenny Menjibar. Its new online ordering system will be in place this year and is already responsible for pre-orders of more than 450 wings and counting. The Lemmon Avenue store, like most wing restaurants, can fry up to 500 wings every 15 minutes, for an absolute maximum hourly output of 2,000 wings. With dine-in, phone-in, and online orders combined, Wing Stop is anticipating selling approximately 7,000 wings on Super Bowl Sunday.
Buffalo Wild Wings is also anticipating a wing total even higher than the number of points the Vikings put up against the Cowboys. Because the majority of its business is to-go orders, Buffalo Wild Wings has doubled its takeout staff for the day and has ordered double the normal wing supply for the big game. By the close of business Saturday, the store predicts that half of the anticipated 14,000 wings it expects to sell on Sunday will already be spoken for with pre-orders.
At a restaurant that typically sells around 4,000 wings on a non-football day, assistant general manager Saul Verduzco says "having our people organized" is what will make all the difference.
(For all inquiring minds, that is just over 20 occurrences of the word "wing" in the previous two paragraphs. You're welcome.)
But don't let these numbers scare you. Both places say they've got their game faces on, ready for the onslaught of wing eating, beer drinking football fans they'll face on Sunday, so there should be no shortage if wings are the vittles of choice at your fiesta. Even if your team doesn't come out on top, the evening won't have been a total loss.
