St. Patrick's Day is Not All Luck With Creative Promoting

The biggest bar holiday shakes hands with the weekend — Hallelujah, March 17th falls on a Friday this year!
    So what if you don’t own an Irish pub. St. Patrick’s Day is so far removed from the holiday’s origins that it hardly seems a prerequisite to have an “O” or a “Mc” in front of your name to dye some brew green and strap on a shamrock. What once was a religious holiday now has morphed into one of the largest drinking days on the calendar, and while some of us might want to take a moment to reflect on the implications of that statement, no one wants to miss out on the ripple effect of profit associated with today’s St. Patty’s celebration.

Santa Cruz Celebration
    When one thinks of St. Patrick’s Day, it typically is all about the camaraderie and heritage that make the Irish so feisty and festive. But as said before, the profits are there, whether your city was built and populated by true immigrants from Mother Ireland or not.
    Thousands of miles away from Dublin, the One Double Oh Seven Club & Smoking Parlor in sunny Santa Cruz, Calif., has been giving and receiving each March 17th for more than 17 years. Owners Mark and Beverly Swanson raised $2,079 last year for the area’s local veterans. While they center the day around the charity with slogans such as “Lay it on the bar for those who lay it on the line,” the Swansons also depend on St. Patrick’s Day for a revenue boost for their own business, as well. “If it falls on the right night,” says Beverly Swanson, “like a Friday, it can be the biggest day of the year.”
    The promotions for One Double Oh Seven’s St. Paddies Day include Leprechauns for Liberty, where customers can purchase one of Beverly’s Leprechauns from five to $20. These American-flag-wielding lucky charms then are strung up around the bar with messages written on them.
    Distributors from Budweiser and Coors both hold raffles at the bar, but the main draw usually is the celebrity bartenders. Police officers, elected city officials and radio personalities all donate a few hours of work behind the bar for the cause. “A lot of them you can’t get out from behind the bar,” says Mark Swanson.
    At the end of a packed day, the servers all donate 20 percent of their tips to the veterans, and then sit down and make a list of what worked and what didn’t to use in the planning of next year.
    “It is so much work that it has to come from your heart,” Beverly says. “If you really believe in it, you can raise the money and it is a whole lot of fun. At the end of the day,” she says, “it is that good kind of tired.”

All Year Long
    At the Tipperary Inn in Dallas, St. Patrick’s Day definitely is the drinking man’s hurrah.
    Owner Tim Russi calls in sponsors including Boru Vodka, Harp, Guinness, Jamesons Irish Whiskey and Smithwick’s Irish ale. St. Patrick’s Day buzz is not confined to March.
    “We have a countdown to St. Patrick’s Day at 180 days out,” Russi says. “In February, we have the Great Guinness Toast. Guinness comes in and selects one person from each place, and then nationally they have a big toast.” Last year, the Tipperary Inn was voted “Best Guinness Pint of 2005” by the Dallas Observer’s readers’ poll, and Russi certainly plans to live up to his delegation.
    T-shirts are in the process of being designed, the city’s antique fire truck will be parked outside again, with all of the firemen in traditional uniforms from the 1930s. Last year’s bill of three separate bands will be outdone..
    “This year, we are going to do four.  Last year was on a Thursday,” Russi says. “This year, we are going to have 10 times as many people.”

Bigger Than the Rest
    The crew at One Double Oh Seven Club & Smoking Parlor goes through an average of 80 pounds of corned beef and about 50 pounds of cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day. At The Tipperary Inn, the 500 pounds of corned beef sent out from the kitchen will constitute nearly 40 percent of the profits for the day. In Roseville, Mich., however, last year one man made his whole St. Patrick’s Day about the food, and the drinks just followed naturally.  
    Looking past the beer profits and straight toward the beef, entrepreneur Frank Stroi called the “Guinness Book of World Records” for a chat about his monumental idea. Wild Woody’s Chill & Grill had curious onlookers, Irish revelers and most of the city’s media crews at his establishment in 2004, as they built the world’s largest corned beef sandwich.
    “Frank Stroi wanted to do something different,” says Promotions Director for Wild Woody’s Chill & Grill Christine Kotila. “The way we do things is always bigger and better.” This was no simple undertaking.
    A tent was erected outside the bar, and the whole town — including the health department — was invited to watch as a 12-foot by 12-foot piece of bread was loaded with 1,032 pounds of corned beef, 150 pounds of mustard, 260 pounds of cheese, 530 pounds of lettuce and topped with its identical twin.
Taking 25 people four hours to complete, the sandwich and its makers made the front page of the paper and earned a mention on CNN.
    “We had 10 kegs of green beer,” Kotila says. “About 6 p.m., we ran out and had to call up Budweiser.’”
The meat and cheese then were donated to a food bank, and the bread was sent to the local zoo.
    The cost of the sandwich? Stroi spent around $10,000 on the promotion, but his bar brought in almost three times that in sales — making it a success any way you slice it. NCB