RESTAURANTS LIKE PLAYING‘ DRESS-UP’
On the outside it’s Cheesie’s Pub & Grub, the humble grilled cheese restaurant. On the inside, for Halloween night only, it was transformed into Bob’s Burgers, a family restaurant made famous by a cartoon TV show with the same name.
The staff at Cheesie’s scrambled to get everything in order for the expected crowd. Some were in costume and in character hours before the start of the Halloween celebration.
Spencer Evans, dressed as Tina Belcher from the show, stared blankly at the camera — in true Tina fashion — as two customers who asked him for the photo smile next to him.
No one at Cheesie’s expected the Facebook event, created on Oct. 25, to gain such traction, said Amanda Gasperson, assistant general manager of the Lake View restaurant at 958 W. Belmont Ave.
It had around 3,200 Facebook users listed as “going” and more than 10,000 listed as “interested.”
“We thought it was just going to be our regulars showing up, and then it blew up, and everyone is just really excited about it,” Gasperson said.
Expecting the event to be much smaller, the restaurant never contacted the TV show about approval. It came anyway last week.
“The show contacted us and is actually really excited about it,” Gasperson said. “They loved that we are a local business and are fully behind us.”
“Restaurants oftentimes play iconic roles in television entertainment,” said Annika Stensson of the National Restaurant Association. “So it makes perfect sense to transform the place viewers have come to love on- screen into a real- life experience.”