So it turns out that the “Big Game” is not a magical fairy that grants your every wish. I think there are many companies around Indianapolis that experienced slightly less of a sales boom than they expected. Hubbard and Cravens set up a few temporary stores within close proximity to Super Bowl village and the Lucas Oil Stadium thinking that all efforts would be greatly rewarded by insane Super Bowl traffic.
oh, the glory
It is probably obvious by now that the Super Bowl did not bring quite the enormous sales for H&C as were expected. I’m not the company’s accountant, and I am not in charge of analyzing the cost/benefit of the Super Efforts. With that being said, in my professional opinion, the Super Game’s output was not worth the input made by the company I work for- and I’d be willing to bet that this was the case for several local companies (with the very notable exception of establishments that also serve alcohol).
What is the lesson here? I suppose for one thing, sales should not be taken for granted. Foot traffic, location, and product do not always automatically ensure terrific sales. These are all great indicators of what could be to come, but thorough market research is always a must.
Why didn’t XLVI turn out more profitably for H&C? Again, I have to limit my opinion to the location in which I worked. I was inside the Crown Plaza hotel, which was located right behind the ESPN broadcasting booth and next to the Zip Line attraction. Our coffee stand was located in the front lobby of the Hotel- a ritzy and fully-booked place from Wednesday through Monday of Super Week.
Pros: We were situated right in the middle of the action and within a fully-booked hotel. There were tons of people milling around our area all the time. Our product is well known locally.
When in Rome...
At first glance, there were no cons. But after the first morning, many negatives came to light:
Cons: We had almost no outside signage so the people milling around outside did not know we were inside. There was a newly renovated Starbucks with excellent signage and visibility right across the plaza. Our coffee was served in the Hotel’s VIP lounge for free. Our coffee was available in the hotel’s restaurant on the other side of the lobby. The hotel, though “full,” was not actually occupied by many people until Thursday afternoon (due to a 4-night booking minimum). H&C pre-ordered all of their baked goods before the week began, so we spent WAY more than needed on goods. There was no access to running water (or a brewer) in our location, so if the stand was manned alone, it had to be closed to brew more coffee. Though we are well known locally, the out-of-towner coffee buyers felt more comfortable buying from the familiar mermaid. For the first two days, our prices were reminiscent of prices inside an airport terminal; people won’t pay $6 for a medium sized mocha? Most people arrived in the super bowl village area after 4pm, which is not prime coffee selling hours. Lastly, the temperature in Indianapolis that week was an unseasonably high, 40-60 degrees F.
In hindsight, if the decision were up to me, I would have opened only from Thursday through Sunday, carried a fraction of the baked goods, kept prices at just slightly higher than normal standards (not astronomically high), not allowed the hotel to serve the same coffee as we were selling (or at least asked them to keep the brand a secret), and planned well in advance to have several outside signs broadcasting our presence. Also, running water would have been nice.
