With the London Knights entering the OHL championship series on Thursday night, it’s a good time to look at some of the economic impacts that the Knights and Budweiser Gardens can bring to restaurants in downtown London.
Mark Kitching – Owner of Waldo’s on King (Credit: Dan McCracken)
“When there’s an event at the Gardens, we’re always full. We’re always fully booked a week ahead, two weeks ahead depending on the name. Whenever the Knights are playing, we’re fully booked. Like tonight is a game, Thursday night. Normally, we’re only half full. Tonight, we’re full” says the owner of Waldo’s on King, Mark Kitching.
When Budweiser Gardens hosts successful events, it brings people from all over the city, and even outside of the city, into the downtown area and creates more business for local vendors. The bars and restaurants are packed with people going out for dinner before an event, and some people go out for drinks after.
At Waldo’s, Kitching says they don’t see much of a difference on the weekends. “Let’s take a Friday night where there’s normally a game, we’ll be fully booked. On a Friday night where there’s no game, we’ll still be fully booked. If it’s on a weekend, we’re always full.” he says.
He also says “the best concert nights for us are Sunday through Thursday. If there’s a concert on one of those nights, we’ll double our business.”
Another restaurant across the street from Budweiser Gardens is FitzRay’s.
Mark McGonigle – Manager & co-owner of FitzRay’s (Credit: Dan McCracken)
“From Budweiser Gardens, we receive about 1% of everyone that goes in it. I know that doesn’t seem like a big number, but let’s say it’s 10,000 people at the Budweiser Gardens, we get about 1% of that” says Mark McGonigle, Manager and co-owner of FitzRay’s.
“For a Knights game there will be 150 people here before and 150 people here afterwards. Same with other events. If I get the ticket sales I can kind of guess what it’s going to be for financial reasons. You’re talking an increase of about 25%. To the servers, it’s a great increase because they can make more tips. They’re getting more hours in their paychecks and stuff” says McGonigle.
He says that on a night when the Knights are playing, they double the number of staff working in the restaurant.
The London Knights will be taking on the Oshawa Generals in the OHL Championship series. Game 1 is tonight and game 2 will be Saturday evening.
