Beer, brats and Brewers
‘The whole city benefits’ from playoff baseball
When Kelly’s Bleachers, a sports bar near Miller Park, opened Monday, the staff was expecting maybe 70 or 80 people to show up to watch the noon game between the Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago Cubs for the National League Central crown.
Instead, more than 200 people showed up, blowing expectations to smithereens and taking the staff by surprise.
“To have that big a crowd here at noon on a
Monday? I don’t believe we’ve ever had a crowd that big at noon on a Monday,” said Anthony Luchini, a co-owner of Kelly’s Bleachers. “We were absolutely packed.”
So goes the business of playoff baseball in Milwaukee, a city where there is a palpable buzz about the Brewers and their chances to make a deep run in the playoffs.
Across the city and region on Wednesday, hospitality businesses and retail stores were adding staff and bringing in truckloads of beer, food and Brewers merchandise to meet demand from excited fans.
“The next couple games here in Milwaukee are going to have a large economic impact on the city in terms of sales and such things as labor income because all of those hotels and restaurants and attractions have to staff up,” said Kristin Settle, communications director for convention and tourism organization Visit Milwaukee.
“The whole city benefits from the Brewers
making the playoffs,” Settle said.
Our team
There’s a kinship between this baseball team and its fans, who make up Major League Baseball’s smallest market, but still managed to show up at Miller Park 2.8 million times this season.
“Milwaukee has always embraced the Brewers. We’ve always been a baseball town,” Settle said. “Even in some of the not-so-good years, Milwaukee has always supported baseball.
“We all take a piece of ownership in the Brewers,” Settle added. “You can see that not only in the playoff games, but year-round.”
For hospitality businesses, the playoff games are events that otherwise wouldn’t be happening.
That has resulted in places such as Kelly’s Bleachers placing huge orders for beer, liquor and food.
“We pretty much tripled everything that we have on hand,” Luchini said. “We have coolers downstairs that we don’t use every day. They are just there for days like this.”
There are extra staff coming in, too, enough to handle the big crowds the bar is expecting.
“As far as the staff goes, pretty much every staff member that I have — or have ever employed, and is still connected to us — is working,” Luchini said.
The bar also will have all of its Miller Park shuttle buses running.
Roll out the barrel
Across the city Wednesday, beer trucks were weaving their way through morning traffic to make deliveries to bars, stores and restaurants.
Forget about being a small market. In terms of sports, the coming stretch of days is big-time.
The Brewers will play against the Colorado Rockies in the divisional playoffs Thursday and Friday at Miller Park.
Then the Wisconsin Badgers will play Nebraska at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison Saturday night. The Green Bay Packers will travel to Detroit to play the Lions at noon on Sunday, followed by another Brewers playoff game in Denver.
“Beer sales and sports are tied closely together, and this is the perfect storm for us,” said David Neville, president and chief executive of Beer Capitol Distributing Co. in Sussex.
“We have extra delivery trucks going out. We have extra merchandisers working at the stores. Our salespeople are putting in more hours,” Neville said.
His company plans for weeks such as this. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Beer Capitol distributes Miller Brewing products, a major sponsor of the Brewers.
Still, “If we don’t get the product to the retailer, then that’s a lost opportunity — and we don’t lose opportunities,” he said.
That will continue as long as the Brewers are in the playoffs. The deeper the playoff run, the more business will increase across the region, Neville said.
“I’ve been doing this for 38 years and the biggest surges I’ve seen in business was the 1982 World Series and Harley-Davidson’s 100th anniversary,” Neville said.
Those events were followed closely by the Packers’ appearances in the Super Bowl, he said.
Bright lights, (kind of) big city
The playoffs have a bigger economic impact on a city the size of Milwaukee as opposed to New York or Los Angeles.
“That’s simply a function of the relative sizes of the economies,” said economist Brian Jacobsen, senior investment strategist for Wells Fargo Asset Management and an instructor at Wisconsin Lutheran College. “Milwaukee might be a small market, but the fan-base is large and there will likely be many out-oftown visitors to boost the hospitality industry.”
A deep run in the playoffs would be good for business.
“More games means more money,” Jacobsen said. As far as a dollar value of the playoffs’ economic impact, “a study of post-season baseball from 1972 through 2001 showed a net economic gain of about $6 million,” Jacobsen said.
There is also the value of the national exposure Milwaukee and Wisconsin will receive as a result of the playoff games.
“It’s very exciting to be able to showcase the city, not only for the people traveling to Milwaukee but also on television,” Settle said. “The national media exposure on ESPN or MLB Network or any of the local affiliates from Colorado who are going to be covering it, that is just immeasurable.
“To be able to showcase Milwaukee visually to people who may not have any particular perception of Milwaukee at all is really great.”
Milwaukee sees about 23 million visitors every year, Settle said.
The playoff exposure will only help reinforce that, she said.
“Certainly the Brewers making the playoffs makes it a lot easier to promote Milwaukee and talk about how amazing Milwaukee is,” Settle said. “But more importantly, it allows us to showcase to more people how great Milwaukee is, because if you’ve never been here, you have no idea.”
“Certainly the Brewers making the playoffs makes it a lot easier to promote Milwaukee and talk about how amazing Milwaukee is. But more importantly, it allows us to showcase to more people how great Milwaukee is, because if you’ve never been here, you have no idea.”
Kristin Settle, communications director for convention and tourism organization Visit Milwaukee