There’s nothing quite like a college football Saturday in The Loveliest Village on the Plains: the mass of fans clad in burnt orange and navy, the eagle’s pre-game swoop around Jordan-Hare Stadium, the gathering of friends and family under a tailgate tent.
However, for businesses around Auburn and their employees, game days mean something a little different.
Whenever the Tigers play at home, that swell of supporters helps generate profits that, in some cases, carry local eateries, bars and hotels through the fiscal year.
Big Blue Bagel is no exception. When the autumn sun rises over the local breakfast joint located in the heart of downtown Auburn, the pregame rush is in full swing.
“If it’s an earlier game, like 11 a.m. or 2:30 p.m. [kickoff ], it’s usually immediately straight from opening the door, it’s line-to-the-door busy,” said Jacob Stanley, manager of Big Blue Bagel. “If it’s an afternoon or evening game, it’s still pretty busy in the morning.”
According to Stanley, that gameday crowd helps make up for other times at other points in the year that are not as lucrative.
“It is really important because it does help us out in the long run, it kind of makes up for how slow things get during the summer months,” he said. “It helps us recuperate not really losses but not really as busy days. It’s not a make or break thing but it does help with the bottom line.”
Down South Gay Street, a similar story can be found at The Collegiate, an independent boutique hotel that was first built in the early 1940s to serve as the only private dorm for women at Auburn at the time.
Known primarily for its rooftop bar overlooking the university’s east entrance, the extra occupancy around important home games helps the hotel make ends meet.
“While a business cannot survive in Auburn from just football game day revenue, we do see a significant uptick in sales and occupancy on home football game weekends from the sheer number of people in town,” said Kim Wirth, owner of The Collegiate.
As with the Big Blue Bagel, Wirth believes that while gameday revenue is important to the bottom line of her business model, much more goes into running a successful business on The Plains.
“Football is an important seven or eight weekends in the year, but we still have to work our plan for the remaining 44 weeks of the year to be successful,” Wirth said.
While home game weekends certainly help the owners and managers of local businesses, they are not the only beneficiaries of a sizeable influx of customers.
For student employees like Hope Guffey, a bartender and self-described “bar mom” at 17-16, the tips service workers receive on such weekends help make ends meet and supplement their $2.50 per hour wage.
“[Tips] mean the world. Often times people base them on the service, and we are, you know, in the service industry, so we try to always make the experience fun for people,” Guffey said. “It means the world to us when we get someone who tipped more than the standard dollar, or 20%, whatever that might look like for them.”
According to Guffey, the best weekends are when big opponents come to town.
“When we have the older crowd in there, the people who are coming back to Auburn at their alma mater or people from out of state or from a different location who are there to support the opposing team, they tend to tip pretty well,” she said.
As toilet paper flies through the air at Toomer’s Corner, signifying another Auburn victory, it also serves as a reminder that game days mean something a little extra to those too occupied to attend the game.
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